Posted 11:05 AM by Scoobie Davis

A Comparison Between Bush and Clark is Needed
My response to Rush Limbaugh’s argument that Wesley Clark is a candidate without substance has generated a lot of attention. It has been put on bulletin boards and cited by other web sites. Some thoughtful people such as Keith Berry are concerned that because I did the comparison of Limbaugh’s resume with Clark’s, it would mean that “political pundits wouldn't be able to criticize candidates unless they themselves had a better record than the candidate. I have no military experience, so I wouldn't be able to criticize President Bush on the war, because the president spent at least some time in the Air National Guard. I couldn't knock President Bush on education as his degree from Yale more than likely trumps my degree from a state college.”

This is a valid concern. One doesn’t have a good resume to be able to raise questions about the fitness of someone for a given office. To effectively rebut Limbaugh’s arguments that Clark was a myth, I only needed to list Clark’s qualifications. However, I added a comparison because I thought it would be fun because my inference of Limbaugh’s comments was that he was not only raising questions about Clark’s qualifications for the presidency but that he was denigrating Clark’s substance in general (e.g., calling Clark “Hillary’s sockpuppet”). Here’s something that Limbaugh said last week that I didn’t include in my comparisons post:

"What is it [the press] said about Bush [in 2000]? 'He’s irrelevant; he’s incompetent; he’s unqualified; he’s nothing but a governor; what experience does he have?' What is Wesley Clark compared to George W. Bush in all the ways the press tries to disqualify Bush? What is it? You tell me: it’s Wesley Clark’s stature over George W. Bush in these people’s minds. What it is is an illusion, an illusion borne of the fact that they know they are in a downward spiral and the only hope they’ve got is to nominate somebody that doesn’t remind anybody of who they really are, and that’s the purpose that Clark serves."

I’m all for stacking Bush’s qualifications and accomplishments against Clark’s. In fact, I will do a post that does this soon. Categories include: Education, military service, business experience and accomplishments, honors and awards, arrest record, and overall character. By the way, I’m laughing as I’m typing this. Help me out and submit your comparisons for these categories at scoobiedavis@hotmail.com. Note: here's a list of Bush's accomplishments in the White House.