The best candidate for the Democrats?

I'll admit I'm prejudiced, but the nine Democratic presidential candidates currently on display in various forums around the country strike me as the sorriest passel of losers since the Keystone Kops.

You can begin, as everybody rightly does, by eliminating the Bottom Three: the Rev. Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley Braun. None of the three seriously thinks that he, or she, has a chance. Sharpton is in the game in the hope of being one of the power brokers at the Democratic convention, as Jesse Jackson used to be. Braun has been introduced into the mix by Democratic strategists who hope she can weaken Sharpton by drawing off some of his black support. And Kucinich – well, I guess Dennis just had nothing better to do than run for president.

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That leaves six serious contenders: Massachusetts Sen. John (The Hair) Kerry, who boasts (and I do mean boasts) of a distinguished war record in Vietnam; Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, whose moderate views on many subjects have thus far prevented him from inflaming a party largely controlled by its left wing; North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, the handsome young trial lawyer who has the advantage of being a Southerner (think Carter and Clinton) but whose entire political career comes down to less than one term in the U.S. Senate; Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri, the former House minority leader, who is slightly shopworn, but has been around for a long time and has earned the gratitude of the labor unions; Florida Sen. Bob Graham, a gentlemanly Southerner of the old school who has surprised everybody by charging that President Bush lied us into war in Iraq; and last – but by no means least – former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, whose strategy seems to be to run to the left of his major primary opponents, especially Sens. Kerry and Lieberman.

Granted, it's a long time from now until November 2004, and the Democrats console themselves with telling the grand old story of how Bush's father came off the astronomic highs he had hit after the Gulf war and lost to Bill Clinton over economic issues. But Bush shows every sign of being aware of that danger, and seems likely to pulverize whichever of the above six lambs the Democrats decide to sacrifice.

So if I were a Democrat, I would be busy looking for someone else – someone with a distinguished career in some field other than politics, which has offered scope to demonstrate a capacity for leadership; a candidate who is personally attractive, without notable blemishes, and who can support any policies that look attractive, because he has no record of supporting others.

Not to keep you in suspense, I am referring to Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, now retired, who presided over the end of the odious Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia during the Clinton administration.

Clark is a handsome and composed figure, still young, and highly articulate. What's more, he has already indicated that he is considering seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, and may have more to say along those lines as fall approaches. He clearly already has some shrewd political advisers who are content to let the current nine contenders chew each other up, leaving it to their tiger to move in later on, bind up the party's wounds, and take over.

On "Meet the Press" recently, Clark expertly picked his way through one of Tim Russert's personalized minefields, taking conventional Democratic positions on all sorts of issues. On the subject of Iraq, he declined to condemn Bush for charging that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, but questioned whether the threat of his using them was sufficiently "imminent" to justify a pre-emptive war.

It is highly debatable whether Clark could defeat all his rivals and win enough key primaries to command the nomination. He is no Eisenhower, fresh from a world-historical military triumph. But he is a remarkably smooth and prepossessing man whom the Democratic Party's old bulls, such as "Mr. Democrat" Bob Strauss, might well choose as a means of uniting it after the carnage of the primaries. Bush would have to take him seriously, indeed.