Clinton talks endorsement, E-word
Posted: Friday, December 14, 2007 2:48 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones
JOHNSTON, Iowa -- Clinton spent half of a news conference today announcing the endorsement of Iowa U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D), then took questions on the Obama drug use dust-up, her electability, her decision to compete in Iowa and how she’s handling the concerns her husband has reportedly expressed about her campaign.
Clinton was asked several times what she meant by comments made during her Iowa Public Television interview that there would be no surprises in a Hillary Clinton campaign. Was she referring to Obama?
"No, it was directed at me," she said. "I think, as many people have said, I’ve read this quote from a lot of my supporters. I’m a known quantity. I am tested and vetted, but what’s most important in this campaign is who will be the best president. That’s my primary case to the people in Iowa and across America. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, and we need a president who is ready on Day One for anything.”
She did not answer a question about whether Obama’s drug use could hurt his electability, choosing instead to reiterate that Shaheen’s comments were not authorized or condoned and that she had apologized to the Illinois senator. Clinton said she had never done drugs and declined to expand on that any further, saying she had answered the question many times before. She also declined to make any pledge not to air negative ads unless that pledge was signed by all the Democratic candidates and argued that drawing distinctions was a legitimate thing to do.
She did not take the opportunity, as she was asked, to say that a candidate’s indiscretions during his teenage years should not be an issue in the campaign.
“It’s certainly not an issue in my campaign, and I said that very clearly to Sen. Obama,” she said.
When asked whether she had ever second-guessed her decision to campaign in Iowa, Clinton said no.
"No, you know, I guess I’ve been in enough campaigns over a lot of years to know that there is no predictability, and there is certainly no inevitability," she said. "You have to get out and work for every single vote. That’s what I have always done. I don’t know any other way to do it."
She went on to play up her planned 99-county Iowa blitz. When asked how she was responding to her husband’s concerns about her campaign, she seemed bemused.
“"I don’t know what you’re talking about with these concerns," Clinton said. "You know, I really don’t, and I understand that there’ve been some stories, but as I said in the interview earlier, I called my campaign, and I said, ‘Are we having a shake-up? I don’t know anything about it.’
"So I’m very happy with the team I have. The team here in Iowa is superb; it is doing such a great job across the board, so we’re just going to get up every day and work hard. That’s the only way that I know how to run a campaign, and I believe that making change requires hard work."
