Last month, in an interview with the Huffington Post, Gen. Wesley Clark called John McCain "untested and untried" as a potential commander in chief. The charge raised a few eyebrows in several quarters, including the Morning Joe team over at MSNBC.
But Clark is not backing down from his analysis. In a Q&A session following his address to the Johns Hopkins School of Strategic and International Affairs on Thursday morning, he repeated the line and expanded on the difference between the value of military service -- which he admits McCain can justly tout -- and the substance of charting defense policy as president, which the retired four-star general claims is not reflected by McCain's military record.
"He [McCain] represents a wonderful, valued tradition of America: the idea of public service," Clark said. "But what I've said before and what I stand by is that in terms of the stuff of national security -- of making decisions, of weighing alternatives, being confronted with risks -- he's untested, largely, and untried. He hasn't been in the executive branch; he hasn't walked into a [national security policy] meeting and have his boss [criticize] his paper."
Clark also burnished his own standing to make such distinctions between service and strategic responsibility, saying, "I've ordered the troops to go in. ... He hasn't lived through those decisions." Still, Clark seemed to concede that McCain is nevertheless likely to be viewed as strong on national security. "In the way that politics works, John McCain will always be associated with the military," he said. "But I hope the voters in the election will be able to discriminate between a man's honorable service in the Armed Forces and experience in the tasks associated with becoming the commander in chief. I think those tasks require judgment, balance, a certain temperament of mind and a willingness to learn from the past and from the current experiences.
"And so, in those qualities, I don't think that his service as a POW is especially commendatory, or his service in the Armed Forces answers the requirements of the commander in chief position, particularly."
When asked whether Barack Obama has the appropriate resume, Clark said the Illinois Democrat is "running on the basis of judgment, not experience," adding: "So far, I think, if you look at his judgment, you've gotta say he's got pretty good judgment."
At the close of the session, the moderator asked Clark how he would respond to a future phone call from Obama about the vice presidency. "Oh, come on!" Clark exhaled with mock weariness, eliciting laughter from the audience. "That's a totally hypothetical question. I want to try to help the country. ... I'm not going to be presumptuous about this, and I hope no one else will be. ... There are a lot of people out there who can help him."