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I was asked on another thread to post a short summary of up to five sentences for why I trust my candidate. I'll repost that piece here since it seems relevant to this topic.
I Trust Wes Clark:
The measure of a person's character and integrity is how one reacts to temptation when no one is looking, and when self-sacrifice is against one's own interest and holds no public glory or acknowledgement.
After Vietnam, Clark could have joined his peers and left the military for private life, leveraging his prestigious West Point and Oxford degrees to make tons of money.
Instead, during a time when the military was unpopular and held in low esteem, he chose to live with constant relocations, sometimes crappy living conditions, and serve his country at low pay, a pittance of what he could have made in the private sector with his prestigious degrees, analytical intelligence, and leadership skills, continuing to turn down lucrative offers from outside the military over the years.
And after he left the military, he could have done what most retired generals do and work for a lucrative weapons firm contracting with the military, but he refused to sell weapons systems, despite the fact that such a position is extremely financially advantageous.
If Clark were a money grubbing power hungry opportunist, he would not be where he is today or made the choices he did in his life at great personal cost to himself and his family, when no one would have cared or faulted him for doing otherwise -- I trust Wes Clark's intelligence (just look how far he's come in a fraction of the time it took the other candidates!), integrity, and character.
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