NY Times: Clinton and Clark Campaign in Iowa

"DES MOINES – File this under the Department of Getting Ahead of Ourselves: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is campaigning in Iowa this morning with a political ally, Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.), and on first blush it’s pretty easy to see a future political ticket there.

For one thing (superficiality alert!), there’s height.

Mrs. Clinton is said to stand at 5’8’’ (some observers put her an inch or two less); if she wins the Democratic presidential nomination, one school of thought is that she would be better off with a running mate who did not tower over her and create a jarring contrast for the cameras.

Mr. Clark, the former NATO commander during Bill Clinton’s administration, appears only slightly taller than Mrs. Clinton, and they had good stage presence together as they table-hopped together at the Drake Diner this morning in search of Iowa Democratic caucus-goers.

There are more important things in a running mate, of course, than height, and Mrs. Clinton is far from becoming her party’s standard-bearer. But like Barack Obama, who would be the first black Democratic presidential nominee, Mrs. Clinton, as a woman, would probably calculate her vice-presidential pick in a different way than the white males who led the ticket in the past.

General Clark, for his part, talked up Mrs. Clinton as a strong commander-in-chief during his asides with patrons at the diner. He told a tableful of middle-aged men that “she knows what she believes” and “she knows where she stands,” while Mrs. Clinton said of Mr. Clark, “he was leading our forces in Kosovo and Bosnia when we got rid of a dictator.”

There were only a few tables of folks at the diner this morning, so Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Clark soon found themselves sat at the counter for coffee, fruit, and chitchat for the benefit of the television cameras. They were joined by Christie Vilsack, the former first lady of Iowa – whose husband, former Gov. Tom Vilsack, is also mentioned as a possible running mate for Mrs. Clinton."

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/clinton-and-clark-campaign-in-iowa/