Surrogates talk up Hillary's experience
Posted: Thursday, December 20, 2007 3:08 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
GRUNDY CENTER, IA -- Clinton and several of her supporters from military and diplomatic circles used the first stop on the last day of her Iowa blitz to talk about the importance of nominating a candidate who has foreign policy experience. She was joined by Gen. Wesley Clark, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke, former Army and VA Secretary Togo West, and Gen. Robert Gard.
Her campaign said she would be joined by other members of the military and foreign policy establishment at campaign stops throughout the day.
The senator set forth an optimistic view of what she’d do around the world, recapping some of what she laid out in an article in Foreign Affairs several weeks ago. "We need to restore America’s leadership with a new beginning, a new commitment to building the world we want, rather than just defending against the world we fear. We need a strong and aggressive foreign policy that stresses cooperation with other countries and reflects our American values,” Clinton told the crowd gathered in the theater of Grundy Center High School here, saying fear shouldn’t be the defining message of an American president.
She talked about her work on the Senate Armed Services Committee, about representing the country abroad as first lady and spoke more specifically than usual about her plans for Iraq, without actually saying anything new. She said she would begin withdrawing troops -- one or two combat brigades a month -- within 60 days of being elected, and said she had worked to make sure the Bush administration could not enter into any agreement to establish permanent bases in Iraq without asking Congress. (After the speech Clark explained that a brigade is about 3,500 or so soldiers and declined to estimated how many troops might need to be left behind.)
"It is tempting any time things seem quieter for a minute on the international front to think that we don’t need a president who’s up to speed on foreign affairs and military matters. Well, that’s the kind of logic that got us George Bush in the first place. Experience in foreign affairs is critical for ending the war in Iraq, averting war in Iran, negotiating a Middle East peace and dealing with North Korea. At this time of year when we all wish for peace, I intend to be a president who moves us closer to that peace and restores our greatness and our moral authority in the world; a president with the strength and experience to lead on day one; a president who doesn’t just talk about change but delivers it,” Clinton said.
She also mentioned the recent National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iran had ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. "That’s good news both for our security and because it undercuts President Bush and Vice President Cheney and their beating the drums for war. It makes it virtually impossible for President Bush to continue his bellicose language and his warmongering. What we need is diplomacy and I’m hoping that President Bush will actually do that now,” she said.
The campaign this week launched a series of feel-good video testimonials by friends and constituents talking about the senator, a bid to humanize a candidate who has high negative ratings and whom even some supporters feel can be remote, cold, and politically calculating. At today’s event, they sought to combine the personal argument with the experience argument -- with each of the speakers including some personal story about the senator in their brief remarks before she took to the podium.
"You’re just someone that people like to be around and gravitate to,” Clark told the senator, as he spoke about meeting her some 24 years ago and emphasized her decisiveness and her knowledge of foreign and domestic policy. "I watched her as she was first lady of the United States,” he said. “I watched her interact with sergeants and privates. I watched her with colonels and generals. I watched her talk personal. I watched her talk policy. She was superb. She did it all. The troops gathered around her. They respected her; they liked her.”
And, as if in response to a criticism of Clinton by Barack Obama, Clark said: “I don’t think you have to be a secretary of the Treasury to learn a lot. I think the best experience you can get is from watching other people and learning from their experience. She’s been deeply engaged in policy and issues since the 1972 McGovern campaign. There’s nobody who has more experience at running for office or more experience on what to do once you get in office than Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
*** UPDATE *** Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz emails First Read this response to Clinton's speech: “Once again, Senator Clinton is trying to convince the American people that she has the ‘experience’ to lead, while refusing to allow the public to review voluminous documents related to her time in the White House. In a time of war, can we really afford to trust a candidate who doesn’t trust us enough to evaluate the facts and make our own determination?”
