WASHINGTON, 1 October 2003 — The more one sees of Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the more mysterious he becomes. He clearly is one of a kind, and everybody is quick to critique him - as long as it is off the record. He could become one of America’s most brilliant presidential candidates, or he might just fall apart in frustration and confusion. Only time will tell.

Although the temptation to search for the key to his uniqueness is great, in fact he is so unusual that one can’t decide where to begin. So let’s just start from the beginning. His father, an Orthodox Jew, was one of a long line of rabbis. Unfortunately, Benjamin Kanne died when Clark was four years old.

He and his mother moved from Chicago to Little Rock, Arkansas, at which time she hid her son’s Jewishness. His new stepfather was kind and considerate, and his mother changed his name from Kanne to Clark when her husband adopted him. Raised a Baptist, Wesley later converted to Catholicism.

Clark remembers that when he and his friends played Confederates and Yankees, the Chicago boy always was put on the Yankee team. And, he recalled ruefully, “the Confederates always won.”

Whether or not this scarred him particularly, Clark was brilliant and let it show. He was appointed to West Point and, throughout his career there, was nearly always first in his class. He loved debating and stayed on the debating team. A captain named Norman Schwarzkopf, later the supreme commander of Desert Storm, told Clark at the time that he should spend more time in team activities, whether in sports or other organized groups, rather than just starring in debates.

From the time he joined the Army, the clearly self-centered Clark loved to critique everything, ad nauseam. According to a Clinton administration official, “after talking to Clark for an hour, you had to take a Valium.” Like the Energizer bunny he never ran down, and was always ready to re-analyze one more time what he did versus what he might have done. Clark never forgave himself for not having a rifle at the ready when, in Vietnam, he suddenly found himself looking down the barrel of a Viet Cong soldier’s gun. The Viet Cong enemy shot him four different times.

Grievously wounded, Clark earned a Silver Star for leading his men even while lying on the ground. His physical rehabilitation included an entire year rebuilding his strength and endurance. Today he is as physically fit as he was at West Point and, whenever possible, he swims daily.

Upon completing West Point, Clark became a Rhodes Scholar, just as did former President Bill Clinton. And, just as Clinton used to recap each day committing to memory the names of everyone who might prove useful in the future, Clark recalled virtually everything he ever learned, which he could produce on demand.

Clark met his attractive wife, Gertrude Kingston, at a Navy party. As the spouse of a career officer on the fast track, she soon learned to move on demand: the couple has moved over 30 times. His wife, who is Roman Catholic and grew up in Brooklyn, can be feisty, but Clark knows the limits of a service wife, even in retirement. He was playing a brilliant round of golf when he suddenly stopped before finishing the round. “I promised to meet Gert to go to a movie,” he explained, “so we’ll have to postpone the rest of the game.”

His announcement that he would be a candidate for president was delayed a day or two until his wife, who clearly did not relish the loss of privacy, reluctantly gave her OK.

As a decorated hero in combat, and with his academic brilliance, Clark also excelled as a general officer in shaping up US soldiers — or, as the army commercial might put it, teaching army men to “be all they can be.”

It is amazingly difficult, however, to find army officers who will discuss Clark “on-the-record.” Off-the-record they can be extremely caustic. One observed that Clark seems exceedingly eager to please, even to the point of saying things that he probably doesn’t believe. Not naturally a hail-fellow-well-met person, he will act that way if it suits his purpose. Another associate described him as “an eager beaver and a perpetual ‘brown nose.’” Other military colleagues say bluntly that some of Clark’s ideas are “off the wall” or “make no sense.” Clark himself says, “I stand up for what I believe is right.”

In Kosovo, Clark who was determined to end that bloodshed, showed extraordinary persistence. While he made serious enemies, on the other hand he prevailed in a war that was just, necessary and in the national interest. Using “rank” when it served his purposes, Clark went right over the heads of others.

Once, when the Russians decided to seize an airport which was not part of NATO’s game plan, Clark was prepared to stop the Russians in their tracks. A British officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, bluntly told Clark, “I am not going to start World War III for you!” The British officer prevailed and bloodshed was averted.

Some time later, William Cohen, the Clinton administration’s Republican defense secretary, apparently devised a carefully thought-out plan to halt Clark’s career. Cohen announced that Clark would be leaving his assignment as head of NATO forces in Europe two months earlier than planned. That, indeed, was the end of Clark’s military career: for whatever reason, political influence was not brought to bear to avert his departure. After his removal Richard Holbrook, the chief US negotiator in Bosnia, tried to cheer Clark up by saying, “Wes, this is the best thing that could have happened to you. Because no one had heard of you until today. I’ll help you get a book agent and recommend you to a speech bureau.”

Clark apparently had no fixed plans for the future. He probably hoped that, after the shock of Sept. 11, 2001, there would be a place for him in the war on terror. That, however, didn’t happen.

Like many professional military officers Clark rarely expressed a preference for either the Republican or Democratic Party. Even a month before he opted to run for president, Clark still had not definitively cast his lot with either party. Clearly, this was a wrenching decision for him.

When he made it, however, he went all out — despite a last-minute bobble which probably will come back to haunt him. While traveling with four journalists in September, Clark said that he might have supported a war on Iraq. Only two other potential candidates, Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich, were clearly against the war. Thus, Clark’s rationale for running - opposition to the war - disappeared even as he was on the way to his first appearance as a candidate.

The next day Clark’s newly recruited handlers altered his message: That Clark would have sought more United Nations diplomatic leverage before attacking Iraq. The serious blunder based on inexperience will likely not be overlooked. On the other hand, many Democrats are desperately looking for a winner, and this dashing military hero looks exactly like what many Democrats are seeking. On the eve of the first Democratic debate on Sept. 25, Clark and Dean were the most watched candidates in the 10-person field. Given that Clark would accept the nomination for either president or vice president, these two men are the ones to watch.

The central theme of the debate at New York’s Pace College was the economy. Gebhardt and Dean worried about protecting American workers. Some of the other debaters, by contrast, worried more about keeping the economy moving forward. As the newest entrant into the arena, Clark largely was left unscathed.

— Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.