Continuing Saga of Clark-Dean scuffle over VP...

Earlier today I wrote "I'm guessing Dean did in fact offer the VP spot to Clark, but obliquely enough that he could plausibly deny having done so. Dean can feel comfortable saying he did not offer the spot to Clark, since he probably never said something like "Hey, support me, and you can be my veep." And Clark is not lying when he says the idea was "dangled". He's simply answering honestly about the implicit content of a meeting that was no doubt full of ambiguity."

Clark confirms this in an interview with Judy Woodruff of CNN:

WOODRUFF: General Clark, you're obviously in South Carolina campaigning for the presidency. But I want to clarify something about this vice presidential offer, so-called. You have said that Howard Dean offered you the slot as his running mate. He today is saying he never did that. Set us straight. What happened? Did he or didn't he?

CLARK: Well, we had a private meeting. And I told him that the key thing for me was to decide whether I was going to run for the presidency or not. He said, Well don't you want to know what the alternatives are?

And at first I said, No. And then I said, OK, well fine, go ahead and tell me but that's not going to affect my decision. He said, Well I'm thinking, you know, the vice presidency, and that kind of thing. It wasn't like, sign on the dotted line.

But it was discussed, it was discussed by him. It was brought up by him in a very positive fashion. And it's not something I've ever seriously considered.

But I think the point here is that his campaign has used this for some time as an effort to sort of buttress his national security flank by saying I might be his running mate. My point is, I'm running to be president of the United States, not to be his vice president. And I'm getting a lot of traction on that.

WOODRUFF: Just to be clear, then, he didn't formally offer you the job or the post as running mate, as his vice presidential running mate, if he gets the nomination?

CLARK: No. But just to be clear, he made the offer. Nobody's going to formally offer that position until the whole process is gone through. But let's put it this way, as I said yesterday, it was dangled out there and discussed. I mean it was offered as much as it could have been, I think.

I love the way Clark refuses to be bullied into saying Dean didn't really make the offer.

Okay, I have a sleeping baby pressing down on my carpal tunnel as I'm typing, so I think it's time to quit my obsessive blogging for the day...