The first outbreak of news-magazine enthusiasm came when Howard Dean was on the covers of Time and Newsweek (and the corner of the U.S. News cover) a few weeks ago. The second outbreak is this week for Wesley Clark. He gets only one cover (but corner mentions on the other two), but the page length is stunning. Round up to four pages in U.S. News, seven in Time and twelve in Newsweek. It’s front-runner treatment.
Joe Klein explains the transparent Democratic-excitement motivation in Time, explaining that the weekend tumble over Clark’s flip-flopping on Iraq was predictable, “as was the drumbeat from the cognoscenti and much of the media for him [Clark] to enter the race and save the day.” The media needs Clark to save the day from what? A Bush win.
The massive Clark boomlet shows the news-mag editors must have spent Clark’s goofy buildup period assembling all the bios and photos and spin for a slam-bang campaign opening.