General Clark, Andrew Card differ, but keep it civil at Hiram | Along The Way

Few sparks flew, but some differences of opinion did emerge when retired Four Star General Wesley K. Clark and former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Andrew Card visited Hiram College last week to discuss elements of common ground that keep the American democracy functioning despite noisy extremism on its edges.

The two were brought to Hiram College by its Garfield Center for Public Leadership whose director, James Thompson, announced that a collaboration with the Mandel Humanities Center at Cuyahoga Community College was enabling some of Mandel’s students to attend.

General Clark as Supreme Allied Commander led NATO during the chaotic war that occurred as Yugoslavia dissolved into small nationalities. He pointed to the word “We,” the first word in the U.S. Constitution.  “It means every American can speak his mind, but he must listen to the other person when he speaks his mind with respect.”

Card, who served President George W. Bush as his chief of staff, said the word “We” is an invitation to participate in the American democracy, which he likened to a room.

“We need to stay on the carpet in the room and not walk out the door until every point of view and perspective is heard,” he said.

America after last November’s midterm election was the topic the two addressed.  Both saw common ground in the results: the U.S. House going Republican by a mere 9 out of a total of 435 members, the U.S. Senate going Democratic by only 2 out of a total of 100 members.

A Republican, Card referred to his New England roots where democracy functions locally at town meetings where every citizen can speak his mind and at school boards where local citizens set policy for the schools. He said his grandmother, a suffragette, gave him the metaphor of likening democracy to being a room in which one must stay on the carpet to participate instead of drifting to the edges and out the door where productive discussion is no longer possible.

A Democrat, Clark said his alignment with the underdog, dated from his father moving the family from Chicago to Arkansas where, as a youngster growing up, he did not fit in. Clark said he was a near-sighted nerd, not part of the in-crowd.  Nevertheless, he graduated first in his class at West Point, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, and rose to the top during his career in the military.

The two men differed on public education, but both saw it as key to the health of the American democracy.  Card said nothing must be done to imperil public education, but said he favors vouchers that fosters competition with the private schools.  Clark said the competition should not extract tax money from the public schools which he said too often are under-funded.  Families who can afford to send the children to private schools do not need public schools’ tax money, he said.

Touching on U.S. wars abroad, differences between the two further emerged.  Clark said polls show 70 percent of Americans favor aid to Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression. Card, although favoring support, mirrored Republicans when he said it should not be a blank check.

Critical of former President Obama, Clark said the United States must keep its word and it lost respect in the world when it did not militarily respond to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of poison gas against fellow Syrians.  He said President Biden’s precipitous ending of the American 20-year occupation of Afghanistan further eroded respect for America. Clark responded that Americans are not good occupiers and that U.S. missions to turn Iraq and Afghanistan into democracies were unrealistic.

Clark saw patterns in American history in which concentrations of wealth eventually lead to progressive movements during which income is more evenly distributed.  The progressive era under both Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson achieved that after huge disparities of wealth developed in the late 19^th century.  He said an era that started with President Reagan has seen the creation of wide disparities of wealth and expressed hope that a new progressive era is emerging to address that once more.

Clark said America’s primary interest abroad remains Europe despite the Obama Administration’s so-called pivot to Asia “because most of us culturally are Europeans.”  He said China is playing a long game and will limit its support for Putin’s war in Ukraine.  He said China would like to the retake the more than two million square miles of Siberia that Russia seized in the unequal treaty between the Czar and a weak Chinese emperor in 1858.

Both expressed worry that the American military is held by a mere 1 percent of the population and that most of the people who apply to join the military cannot cut it physically.  Clark said he preferred a citizen army drawn by a Selective Service draft.  He referred to the concept of a two-year program of national service, whether it be military or non-military, which he said would help young Americans function more effectively and with greater purpose.

Card stuck to espousing principles of free choice for military service.

David E. Dix is a retired publisher of the Record-Courier.

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: General Wesley Clark, Andrew Card speak about democracy at Hiram