Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, will be running a new campaign ad in New Hampshire. Against a backdrop of black-and-white Vietnam battlefield photos, a deep-but-soft-voiced announcer opens by saying the following:

"The first bullet shattered his hand. The second and third hit his shoulder and leg. As he hit the jungle floor, he rallied the troops and directed the firefight. He remained with his unit until the battle was over. Now, when we need a leader to clean up the mess in Iraq, he's the one who has done it. In the Balkans, he helped negotiate a peace between bitter enemies and led a multinational force that stopped a campaign of terror, liberated a people and brought peace without the loss of a single American soldier..."

The rest of the spot shows more black-and-white photos of Clark meeting the people, with the announcer saying the candidate is the one to lead the country back to a strong economy, etc.

The commercial is sure to irritate Massachussets Sen. John Kerry, another presidential candidate who, by the way, served in Vietnam. It will also likely irritate Democratic frontrunner Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, not so much because it highlights a war in which Dean did not serve, but because it's just a good, riveting TV commercial.

Also noteworthy: Clark doesn't mention President Bush by name, nor criticize the president except in the reference to "the mess in Iraq." Perhaps with the president's approval ratings bottoming out at between 50 and 56 percent, despite a year of around-the-clock, no-holds-barred negative attacks, Democrats have realized they need to have a message beyond, "Not Bush."

Clark responds, in a significant move for his campaign.