When General Wesley Clark entered the race for the US presidency he was hailed as an all-conquering savior who could provide the magic ingredients to defeat US President George W. Bush and capture the White House for the Democrats.
Not any more. As Bush arrives home from his state visit to Britain, he will have the satisfaction of seeing Clark's campaign in crisis. It is low on funds, has lost key staff and is fizzling out in key battleground states.
Meanwhile, the campaign of Vermont Governor Howard Dean has captured the public imagination, securing his place as the frontrunner in the still crowded field of nine Democrat candidates.
"There was tremendous potential in Clark as a candidate, but there have been major problems in the execution," said John Zogby, head of polling organization Zogby International which conducted research for Clark supporters before the general's announcement that he was joining the race.
Clark looked great on paper. As a retired four-star general -- complete with war wounds from Vietnam -- he was seen as invulnerable on the Democrats' traditional weakness: national security. He was also anti-war, having appeared on TV as a pundit critical of the invasion of Iraq. And he was seen as the sort of outsider who could galvanize a Democrat race full of figures little known outside the corridors of power in Washington. It has not turned out that way, however.
Clark's late entry left him months and, in some cases, years behind the other candidates. In the marathon contest that is a US presidential election, that was a crippling handicap. In terms of getting local campaign offices open and recruiting effective local workers Clark's team was lagging.
That has seen Clark pull out of the first state to vote: Iowa.
"You need months on the ground to even have a hope in Iowa. Clark just did not have that," said Richard Stoll, a political scientist at Rice University, Texas.
Within three weeks of announcing his bid, Clark's campaign manager Donnie Fowler had quit. Aides put the resignation down to "growing pains" in the campaign, but the troubles quickly got worse.
Clark has come across poorly in some of the TV debates.
His positions on many domestic issues have not filtered clearly through the media, and his campaign has been marred by serious gaffes. Comments made in May 2001 surfaced, showing Clark heaping praise on Bush and his team: "I'm very glad we've got the great team in office, men like Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice ... people I know very well -- our President George W. Bush," he told an Arkansas Republican dinner.
That caused dismay among many supporters.
Dean's campaign has carved out double-figure leads over its rivals in New Hampshire, and Clark is now not even in second place there. After an initial surge when he announced his candidacy, Clark has fallen into single figures in the latest polls.
Now his staff are rebranding the general as an underdog candidate.
"It is the way for us to go. We are the team coming from behind to take this," said one aide.
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