Four-star General Wesley Clark announced his presidential intentions today, which can only mean one thing:

The Republican Smear Machine is about to cranked up to “eleven.”

It’s going to be a challenge: Clark is smart, articulate, funny, brave, and well-liked. His ability to make George Bush look like craven weasel might be second only to… well, Bush himself. So it’s imperative for the right to smack Clark early and often. But how? And when?

That’s where you come in, dear readers. Just put your answers to the questions below in the Comments box and win a Valuable Prize!

1) Who will be the first major blogger to launch a broadside attack on Clark?

It all starts in the blogosphere nowadays. Hordes of unpaid conservative cyberflunkies are combing the internet as we speak, looking for evidence to support some spurious thesis about Clark’s rottenness. Who will get there first?


2) When the Republicans finally come to an agreement about what Clark’s Big Problem is, what will it be?

It looks like the tar-and-feathers squad has tentatively settled on how to trash the other front-runners: Dean is mean, and he’s too liberal, and he’s a compulsive liar (hey, that stuff worked on Gore!). Kerry is wooden, boring, and machine-like (ibid). And Gephardt is wholly owned by old school politics and the unions (ibid, dammit, ibid!). So what’s wrong with Wesley?


3) What will be the big, nasty, unprovable rumor about Clark that appears out of nowhere, get incontrovertibly refuted immediately, and yet somehow linger around the fringes right up until election day?

You can’t run a modern campaign without one of these. There are a lot of people out there who lack the intellectual gifts to appreciate a nuanced message like, “He’s a liar!” or “He’s a big stupid-head!” For these folks, the opposition is always ready to supply a patently ridiculous and lurid rumor to chew on. So what’ll Clark’s be? Did he kill a man? Or two? Is he secretly gay? Did he sell secrets to the Chinese? How about trafficking in white slaves? Take your best guess.

As I said, simply submit your answers in the Comments below. The person with the most correct calls wins. In the event of a tie, I’ll perform a random drawing among the finalists. Stay tuned to find out what the Valuable Prize will be, but I can assure you of this - it’ll be big, it’ll be valuable, and it may just help you defend yourself when secret vampire Wesley Clark appears at your window, ready to once again drink the blood of the living.