The fun thing about today’s Washington Post report on Wesley Clark’s version of Kosovo events is that Clark is egotistical enough to want to puff his own legacy at the expense of Bill Clinton’s. Just imagine witnessing Clark getting testy with Clinton on military matters (like the Apache discussion mentioned in the story), and Clinton getting testy right back. Clinton generally liked to drop bombs without consulting the experts on his team who disagreed with him (See Woolsey, James.) You can bet Bill probably came out of this exchange and said “fire this guy.”

I imagine the political impact of this story is the demonstration that Clark is not much of a Democratic team player, and to use a Kerry phrase, too reckless and arrogant to be president. But it also opens a critical window on how the Clinton-Gore team wanted Kosovo to be a quick and dirty war with low domestic political impact, except making people forget about impeachment. It shows why they never would have risked the long-term burden of uncertainty and political pain that Bush is risking in Iraq.