Wesley Clark has told associates that he will decide in the next few weeks whether to declare for president. If he does, it will transform the Democratic race. Call me star-struck, but I think he'd instantly be in the top tier.

Clark, in case you've been on sabbatical in New Zealand, is all over the talk shows. He's the former NATO supreme commander who headed operations in Kosovo, a Rhodes scholar who graduated first in his class at West Point and a Vietnam vet with several combat medals, including a Purple Heart.

He has been a tough critic of the Bush foreign policy, including the Iraq war. His domestic positions are not as fully fashioned, but he would repeal President Bush's tax cuts and revisit the so-called Patriot Act.

More interesting, many of Clark's progressive views on domestic issues come by way of his military background. Though it is very much a hierarchy, the military is also the most egalitarian island in this unequal society. Top executives — four-star generals — make about nine times the pay of buck privates. In corporate life, the ratio of many chief executives' compensation to worker bees' is more like 900 times.

The military also has the most comprehensive child-care system in the United States. And, as Clark likes to point out, everyone has health care. Clark is also pro-affirmative action and pro-choice.

My favorite Clark riposte is on guns. He grew up hunting, in a family that had more than a dozen hunting rifles. But he's pro-gun control. "If you want to fire an assault weapon," he has said, "join the Army." The National Rifle Assn. can put that in its AK-47 and smoke it.

Clark is the soldier as citizen. Even better, he's the soldier as tough liberal. Just imagine Clark, with his real and distinguished military record, up against our draft-dodger president who likes to play Top Gun dress-up. Imagine the Rhodes scholar against the leader who can't ad-lib. Oh, and he's from Arkansas.

The draft-Clark people have already raised more than $1 million. Clark's not-yet-announced campaign is the second Internet phenomenon this year, after Howard Dean's.

He would be a terrific draw for political independents, as Republican John McCain was.

The downside is that it's hard to get into the race this late. A lot of the fund-raisers and campaign professionals are already committed.

Bobby Kennedy jumped into the 1968 presidential campaign much later, after the February New Hampshire primary, when Eugene McCarthy proved that LBJ was vulnerable. But that was a different era and he was Bobby Kennedy.

On the other hand, a lot of the support for the existing candidates is soft, with the exception of Dean's. Some of Richard Gephardt's closest backers wonder whether he can really do it, and that also goes for John Kerry, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards.

This year, just about everyone engaged in Democratic politics has a higher commitment to the goal of ousting George W. Bush than to any single Democratic candidate. Clark could probably peel off a lot of donors and campaign professionals — and grow some new ones.

If Clark gets in, Kerry would be hurt the most, because Kerry is most like Clark. His military record and defense expertise make him the most bulletproof of those in the Democratic field on national security issues.

Paradoxically, Dean too might be hurt. Dean has been the favorite of the antiwar activists and he's also the freshest face. But Clark is also an antiwar candidate, as well as a former four-star general, and an even fresher face. As someone from a culturally conservative part of the country, he'd also pull from Lieberman, Edwards and Bob Graham.

Who might Clark pick as a running mate? Someone with domestic political experience: a Western or Midwestern governor or senator. Maybe New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former Clinton Cabinet official and a Latino. Or how about Illinois' popular progressive Sen. Dick Durbin?

Dwight Eisenhower was the last general to make it to the White House. He could have had the nomination of either party. He decided that he was a Republican, but he governed as an old-fashioned moderate.

Now all of this may just be an August sunstroke fantasy. We'll soon find out. And if Clark doesn't get in, he'd make one fine vice presidential candidate.