Clinton, ‘too serious’?
Posted: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 7:23 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones
ELKADER, Iowa -- Hillary Clinton spoke today about people’s perceptions of her and about the importance of a candidate’s relationship with the military.
"Some people think I am maybe too serious a person,” she told an audience packed into an opera house in this town near the Wisconsin border in northeastern Iowa. “Well, that’s not the way I am all the time. But I think this is a serious election, and I think we’ve got to get it right. We don’t have any margin for error, and I think the problems that we are going to inherit and the failures of the Bush administration are really serious.”
The Clinton campaign this week launched a series of video testimonials meant to humanize a candidate some voters worry is cold, politically calculating and remote. The senator is traveling the state with friends and constituents she has helped, who are sharing stories about her, as part of the final push to win over caucus-goers here.
Clinton talked about her foreign policy experience and then, in what sounded like a new argument for supporting her candidacy, she emphasized the importance of choosing a nominee who has a good relationship with the military, while making repeated references to how long she’s been around.
The comments came in response to a question from a man who wanted to know why he should trust the senator to make a possible future decision about declaring nuclear war.
"I believe that what you have to look for is a combination of the awareness of what (sic) to be done to avoid ever getting to that point and the ability to actually implement that,” she said, “and I think I bring that experience and a track record over the last 15 years of looking for ways to bring people together, to actually, you know, find common ground from Northern Ireland to the Middle East to Latin America to Africa where I have worked specifically to, you know, make it possible to have a safer, more peaceful, secure world. Also I think that I have an understanding of what it will take to maximize our ability to prevent war.
"I also think it’s important when you look at someone running for president to figure out whether they know how to work well with the military, so that you’re not either persuaded to do something you shouldn’t or you stand in the way of doing what you should, and I have not only served on the Senate Armed Services Committee, but have worked extensively on behalf of issues affecting the military and have a good working relationship with a lot of our commanders both current and retired.
“And I guess finally, you know, I have lived long enough to know that you can’t get excited about everything. You can’t get carried away by people calling you names or threatening you or trying to bully you; you just take a deep breath and try to keep working with people no matter what they say about you, or your country for that matter. So I think in terms of temperament and understanding of human nature, I’ve just been at this long enough to have a better sense of how to do this than I would have if I hadn’t lived the life that I’ve lived. Ultimately, that is a very personal decision, but I can assure you that, my priorities are for peace, for stability, for finding common ground whenever I possibly can and that’s what I intend to do as president.”
