Clark, Garfunkel, Drudge and Edwards.

There are numerous expressions-clichés-to describe someone who's not smarter than the average bear. "Well, he's no rocket scientist," had a lot of currency a decade ago; "She's a taco short of a combo platter" is currently popular; and "He's got the I.Q. of a houseplant" has never gone out of style. The perennial putdown, of course, is that some sucker is "no Rhodes scholar."

Maybe an upshot of the Democratic presidential contest will be a retirement of that phrase, since Gen. Wesley Clark is a Rhodes scholar, yet judging by his campaign he seems far worse off than a child left behind. I've yet to find a journalist who accurately predicted the Iowa caucuses results-including yours truly, who dismissed the slippery John Edwards a year ago and insisted that Dick Gephardt would wind up as the party's nominee-so there are plenty of dumbo cracks to go around.

So, as I'm writing on Monday, a day before the New Hampshire primary, you'll find no speculation here, aside from the unfortunate fact that Clark is by all odds through, and there goes a percentage of the hilarity factor. The retired general may have a lot of Clinton money behind him, but his debate appearances, stump speeches and televised interviews make an impartial observer believe that Adm. James Stockdale had more on the ball than Clark.

Never mind that he hired Chris Lehane, the reptilian Gore irritant from 2000 who did a brief tour with John Kerry before he either quit or was fired. Forget that Clark has promised (and variously recanted) that on his watch no terrorist will ever wreak destruction on U.S. soil again, or that a woman should have the right to abort a child at nine months and counting. Skip his congratulations to George W. Bush and Tony Blair in London's Times (a Murdoch property!) after Baghdad fell, only to later say the invasion was a colossal mistake.

Clark-and his staff-doesn't even have the acumen to vet those who endorse his White House run. George McGovern is certainly no disgrace, but the general mentions the '72 Democratic nominee with the same reverence as fellow supporter Michael Moore, the millionaire working stiff who's currently selling scads of copies of his silly screed Dude, Where're My Toes? Sorry, Dude, Where's My Country?.

Even Peter Jennings, the ABC cocktail-circuit anchorman who's barely less hostile to Bush than Sidney Blumenthal, couldn't resist nailing Clark at last Thursday's NH debate by asking him what substantiation he had about limo-enthusiast Moore's claim that the president was a "deserter" during the Vietnam War. (Even though Jennings put forth the most damaging question, Clark blamed Fox News anchor Brit Hume, a conservative, for his bad showing. He said the next day, "I looked at who was asking the questions, and I think that was part of the Republican agenda in the debate.") Clark said he hadn't verified the charge-five days after Moore made the remark in introducing the candidate at a rally-but said the filmmaker was a man brimming with courage and a "great American."

Jennings: "Let me ask you something you mentioned, then, because since this question- and-answer in which you and Mr. Moore [were] involved in, you've had a chance to look at the facts. Do you still feel comfortable with the fact that someone should be standing up in your presence and calling the president of the United States a deserter?"

Clark: "To be honest with you, I did not look at the facts, Peter. You know, that's Michael Moore's opinion. He's entitled to say that. I've seen-he's not the only person who's said that. I've not followed up on those facts."

It's possible that even Lehane cringed at that snippet of paranoia. I'm no conspiracy buff-even less so since my 11-year-son can't stop yakking about Kurt Cobain's "murder"-but isn't it apparent to even someone who's not a Rhodes scholar that the Clintons are chuckling at Clark's public humiliation, and praying that John Kerry (or Edwards or Howard Dean, for all I know) flames out against Bush in November?

Frankly, I don't really think the 2008 nomination is Sen. Hillary's for the asking, especially if Rudy Giuliani challenges her in 2006, but if Bill (and Terry McAuliffe, if he wants to keep his DNC job) doesn't proceed on that assumption he'll probably go on an eating binge and wind up looking like Michael Moore. (Pardon the slur against the heavyset, not my usual m.o., but it's the least Moore deserves after expressing remorse that the 9/11 victims were in states that voted for Gore.)

Facts Vanish

Adam Nagourney and Katharine Q. Seelye delivered yet another black eye to the New York Times with their sloppy reporting on the New Hampshire debate. Writing on Jan. 23, the duo said about candidate Edwards: "And Senator John Edwards of North Carolina reminded the audience that he had beaten as tough a Republican opponent as the one in this White House. 'Remember, I didn't get to the Senate by accident,' Mr. Edwards said. 'I actually defeated an incumbent Republican senator who was part of the Jesse Helms political machine in North Carolina.'"

Instead of taking the White House hopeful's words at face value, Nagourney and Seelye might've memorized a passage in Times' glue-farm resident Russell Baker's essay on John Dean's book about Warren Harding in the Feb. 12 New York Review of Books. Baker wrote, splendidly: "For twenty or thirty years after his death Harding was notorious even among schoolchildren as our most scandalous president. No longer; history has now joined Latin in the graveyard of American education."

True, Edwards did win his '98 campaign (propelled, in part, by his personal fortune derived as a trial lawyer preying on gullible juries), but one-term senator Lauch Faircloth was hardly "as tough" an opponent as Bush. In fact, Faircloth ran a laconic campaign, dull on the stump and not savvy enough to figure out that an attractive youngster like Edwards was a threat; it was the year, remember, of the backlash against the GOP for its appropriate drive to impeach Bill Clinton. Additionally, Helms' machine wasn't exactly in the same league as the late Richard Daley's: The retired senator faced a brutal campaign each time he ran, and was often written off by the Beltway experts.

In addition, as John Wagner said in North Carolina's News & Observer on Jan. 19, Helms' "machine," the Congressional Club, disbanded before Faircloth's '98 reelection bid.

At least the Times' political reporters are, willfully or not, guilty of only non-existent research. Paul Krugman, on the other hand, has no compunction about distorting reality to slash Bush to extract whatever hair's up his butt in any given week. Krugman's op-ed column of Jan. 23, about the perils of touch-screen voting machines, is reasonable enough. (Although I maintain that "Florida" could've happened in any state that was close in the last presidential race; election fraud, especially in urban areas, is the mad pig of American democracy.)

But Krugman's opening paragraph is something you'd expect to read on a Howard Dean website. He says, implausibly: "The disputed election of 2000 left a lasting scar on the nation's psyche. A recent Zogby poll found that even in red states, which voted for George W. Bush, 32 percent of the public believes the election was stolen. In blue states, the fraction is 44 percent."

It's hardly remarkable that the Princeton professor extrapolates Zogby's numbers this way, but of course it's completely dishonest. For example, Bush won Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and West Virginia by small margins. Which means, Paul, that a large minority of people in those states voted for Al Gore and some of them believe the election was "stolen." If you're inclined to play Krugman's game, why not mention all the Gore supporters in New York and California, states he won by a landslide, who don't believe the election was an act of thievery?

He's Here, He's Clear, Get Used to It

It's amazing that in 2004, Matt Drudge is still referred to as a "cybergossip," whose reputation is regularly impugned by liberal bloggers who wouldn't even be in business if not for the Internet pioneer. Josh Marshall, a smart and genial man, whose TalkingPointsMemo.com site was, until it became a virtual advertisement for Wesley Clark, quite readable, ought to know better. He took off on Drudge ("an unreliable source") last week for publicizing Mr. Two Americas' 1998 statement advocating a limited reform to Social Security. As a senatorial candidate in the dotcom boom, John Edwards suggested to senior citizens that up to 10 percent of SS surpluses be invested in stocks and bonds.

Marshall goes on to accuse Drudge of being an RNC stooge, or "liaison," as he puts it. In fact, Drudge is not surprisingly more devoted to his career than any political affiliation, and will run headlines and links regardless of whom they embarrass. Just ask the Bush twins.

Fakin' It

How humiliating was it for Art Garfunkel, at his advancing age, to be arrested last week for possession of a small amount of marijuana? I guess Artie's faded so deep into the woodwork of has-beens that he can't afford an entourage of handlers to keep such routine matters out of the newspapers. But there it was in the Daily Freeman on Jan. 22, a brief story about the Hurley, NY bust in which reporter Ariel Zangla wrote: "State police Capt. Louis Barbaria Jr. said the trooper didn't realize who he arrested until later, even though Garfunkel identified himself as a celebrity."

I suppose Garfunkel's doing okay in the pocketbook department, but what an ignominious fall from his heyday as Paul Simon's not-so-equal partner in the 1960s. I remember as an eighth-grader going to Yankee Stadium for Opening Day and although the game was a bore, the highlight was spotting the duo in box seats as my buddies and I roamed around from our nosebleed seats. Not that I was a huge fan-S&G always seemed like hippie-dippy Dylan imitators-but still, when you're a teenager from Huntington, Long Island, it's not every day that bona fide celebrities are as close to you as Michael Moore's mouth is to a bag of Doritos.

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