Giving up but getting ahead

Wesley Clark stood before his supporters, his eyes tired and soulful, his smile warm and tinged with mixed emotions. His wife, whom he affectionately termed “the general’s general,” beamed radiantly at his side.

There were red, white and blue banners, balloons and streamers, but it was not exactly a celebration.

It was the end of his presidential campaign.

“But it’s not the end of the cause,” Clark said, looking out with a steady gaze. “The real cause is the campaign for America’s future.”

In the eyes of many analysts, this is one of the most important moments of a political career. It is equal parts Shakespeare, Machiavelli and Oprah. It is a crucial step in America’s highest-stakes “Survivor,” a process of elimination with profound historic consequences.

It is the delicate art of bowing out.

And to some analysts, Clark’s speech was a model of the graceful departure. He gave a partisan nod to the Democratic Party, “the party of the people.” He applauded his Democratic primary rivals. He dinged President Bush for the loss of American jobs and for getting U.S. forces “bogged down in the wrong war.”

At the very least, he had choreographed a strong, dignified exit that would hold up to the glare of history.

Clark “walked off the stage gracefully, with his head held high,” said Jeffrey Berry, a political science professor at Tufts University. “At this point, he’s a legitimate contender for vice president, if [John] Kerry decides he wants to go with an all national security team.”

Another trailing rival, Howard Dean, however, is drawing criticism from some observers for not knowing how to handle defeat.

Dean “is a bad loser,” said Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science at Georgetown University. “He’s very defensive in interviews. He’s become more vicious in his attacks. And he’s going for the jugular at a time when the party is sorting itself out and looking for unity. It looks like a desperation move.

“I don’t think he’s setting himself up particularly well for a run next time,” she said.

Experts agree there is an art to losing. And if done well, defeat can be a victory by other means.

“Everyone suffers defeat in life. Everyone knows what you’re going through,” said Landon Parvin, a White House speechwriter during President Reagan’s administration who has written speeches for several Republican presidents, Democratic lawmakers and, most recently, for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“So you share a little bit of that, and it’s something that people can identify with,” Parvin said. “The concession speech is more interesting than the victory speech. There’s a chance to open the door to who you really are inside. The more honest and human you can be in your concession, the better it is.”

The single most important element in a concession is graciousness, said Eli Attie, the writer of David Dinkins’ mayoral concession in 1993 and chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore’s when he yielded to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the hotly contested 2000 election.

“It’s the moment when people need to know the system works. We have this vote and it’s something we have to honor, even if we’re the loser,” said Attie, now a producer for NBC’s “The West Wing.”

Losing is such an inevitable part of the political process that experts recommend candidates carry two speeches the night of an important election: one for victory and one for defeat.

Emotionally charged ad-libbing can haunt a candidate. Dean blew it with his “scream” rallying speech following his disappointment in Iowa. People never forgot Richard Nixon’s bitter words -- “They won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” -- after his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962, though that didn’t stop him from winning the presidency six years later.

A candidate’s style of losing can be perceived as a character issue, a litmus test for maturity and stability, a test of a candidate’s mettle.

Arizona Sen. John McCain won high marks when he stepped out of the 2000 presidential race. He had been savaged by Bush supporters in South Carolina, but he rose above it to endorse Bush, though he made it clear he was still stinging from the lashing.

Reagan biographer Lou Cannon recalls that the elder George Bush took a pounding from the Reagan campaign in the 1980 primaries and then diplomatically stepped out of the race. Reagan was so impressed he made Bush his vice presidential running mate, Cannon said.

“He had this wimpish image, and yet he was so dogged that people, including Reagan, began to feel differently about him,” Cannon said. “The way he handled himself in defeat made people respect him. Bush hung in, and that’s how he got to be vice president and president.”

Concession speeches and those afterward in support of the party are often memorable. Some consider Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s speech at the Democratic National Convention after he dropped out of the 1980 presidential race his best ever. In it, he evoked the social justice ideals of the Democratic Party, saying “the dream will never die.”

“Candidates are often at their most eloquent when they’re dropping out,” said Paul Orzulak, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, Sen. Tom Harkin and Sen. Paul Lieberman, and a member of the West Wing Writers speechwriters group in Washington.

“A lot of people listen and say, ‘If he had spoken that well before, maybe we wouldn’t be in the spot we’re in,’ ” he said.

In primary races, “you really don’t want to overstay your welcome,” Orzulak said. “Howard Dean said he would step down after Wisconsin and then he retracted that. A lot of Democrats aren’t happy,” Orzulak said, because Dean could spend the weeks until the March 2 Super Tuesday primaries “basically trying to tear down John Kerry with things the Republicans can use against Kerry in the election.”

Quixotic U-turns are common in politics.

Promising Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart walked one of the most humiliating gauntlets in modern politics after he was caught entertaining model Donna Rice solo at his Washington townhouse. He made a crippled return to the primary race months later, making such a poor showing that he dropped out for good in March 1988, saying, “I got a fair hearing.”

Ross Perot bowed out of the presidential race in 1992 and reentered it a few months later. He later told a “60 Minutes” interviewer that he dropped out because he had heard reports of a Republican plot to embarrass his daughter at her summer wedding; he said the plot involved embarrassing computer-altered photos of her. Among his sources, he said, was a former soldier of fortune who bragged he was once a freelance CIA assassin.

No one says giving up political dreams is easy.

When Davy Crockett lost his 1829 congressional reelection bid in Tennessee, he strode up the courthouse steps and told voters: “I’m going to Texas and you can go to hell.”

The late Arizona Rep. Mo Udall cracked up supporters when he bowed out of the 1976 primaries, saying: “The voters have spoken -- the bastards.”

Rep. Richard Gephardt earned respect by bowing out early this year, after a disappointing fourth-place finish in Iowa, ending decades of presidential aspirations. “I gave this campaign everything I had in me,” he told a St. Louis news conference, his voice breaking.

Clark’s departure couldn’t have been better if it was scripted. Which, in fact, it was.

“We spent a lot of time on this,” said the speechwriter, Josh Gottheimer. “You want to be upbeat,” he said. “Really forward-looking and positive. ‘This soldier’s not fading away. We continue marching until we send George Bush back to Texas.’ ”

Above all, candidates bowing out must “suggest there is a higher purpose that will carry on,” said Daniel Casse, a former special assistant to George H.W. Bush in the White House.

“They have to suggest it was about something other than ‘me,’ ” he said. “In fact, a lot of campaigns are just about ‘me.’ ”