General Wesley K Clark

The field of nine Democratic candidates may grow to ten. Friends of General Wesley K Clark have been blabbing, and they say he's going to run. The New York Times splashes the article up front, and makes predictions of its own: that Clark will announce his candidacy on September 19th in a speech at the University of Iowa, four days after the deadline for candidates to report their 3rd-quarter finances. Clark himself gets only two sentances:

In an interview from his office in Little Rock, Ark., General Clark said today that he intended to announce his decision whether he would run in two weeks or so. "I've got to by then," he said. "I've just got to. I can't have done nothing, and if I do it, there's groundwork to be laid."

Clark's candidacy would definitely make the field more claustrophobic, no matter what Terry McAuliffe says.

While some contenders view General Clark more as a running mate than presidential threat, his credentials could pose problems for several of them. As a former military officer, he would sound at least as credible on national security matters as Dr. Dean. As a Southerner from Little Rock, General Clark might blunt the appeal of Mr. Edwards and Mr. Graham in the South. And as a Vietnam veteran, he would temper a prominent theme of Mr. Kerry's campaign, that he is the only Democrat running to have served in combat.

At some point I should ask people to make predictions on what the pair in the final running will be. I'm inclined to think Gephardt-Dean right now, but things change quickly in a race without substance.