Rivals are wrong about Clinton's experience

[William769]

Rivals have been seeking to undermine Sen. Hillary Clinton's claim that her experience is an advantage in her run for the Democratic presidential nomination. Her eight years as first lady count for little, they say. Sure, she won re-election last November, they say, but New York is a solidly Democratic state. Really, she is just a one-term senator.

In the logic of politics, questioning an opponent's credentials is a fundamental right. And in our overheated 24/7 presidential campaign, any claim is likely to find partisans and media types willing to run with it for a few days.

But during her editorial board with the Monitor on Friday, Clinton made a convincing case that both in campaigning with her husband and in living with him in the White House for eight years, she learned plenty.

She spoke wistfully of the 1992 primary campaign in New Hampshire. Her husband took two huge hits in the final days of that campaign. He faced allegations of sexual dalliances, and a letter he wrote to the draft board during the Vietnam War became public. The first he answered on 60 Minutes with his wife at his side. On the second, he faced the media and defended himself in Manchester.



http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070826/OPINION/708260348/1027/OPINION01

[Colobo]

1. Obama acknowleged her experience on TDS, so her other rivals

are the ones at fault.

[Adelante]

4. Who benefits? Exactly.

Witness you-know-who and the hundred threads a week diverting attention from his own candidate's shortcomings by attacking Obama.

[jaysunb]

2. What the hell, maybe Laura should run.

:evilfrown:

[William769]

3. I wish she would!

Just another noose around the Republicans necks.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

9. barney has even more experience.

probably

wait! lobbyists from K street have even MORE experience, and they have spent even more time in power, in the white house, and drafting bills.
let's pick them as president.

[cleveramerican]

5. Experience is not her main drawing card

Its raw political skill.
She has it head and shoulders above everybody else on the political stage.

I kind of think experience in the senate is a wash, the paper trail you leave is as likely to hurt you as help you

[durrrty libby]

6. That is it exactly and in a nutshell

:toast:

"Its raw political skill.
She has it head and shoulders above everybody else on the political stage."


Love it

[emilyg]

8. Ex-Actly.

[Jim Sagle]

7. She's got plenty of experience as a DLC corporatist, good cop Democrat.

Experience as a REAL Democrat, zip.

[MannyGoldstein]

10. Thanks To Her Impressive Experience, She Voted To Go To War With Iraq

The biggest US catastrophe since... well, probably ever.

With experience like that, I'll take inexperience. At least an inexperienced person might not have made such an obvious and hiddeous mistake.

[Dawgs]

11. Will you accept Obama's experience as an elected state Senator?

Or his experience as a community organizer?

Or his experience as a professor teaching constitutional law?

I personally think the 'experience' question is bullshit for any of our candidates? They are all great leaders that deserve more than questions like this. I thought it was wrong for Stephanopolous to waste the first part of the last debate on it, and I think it's wrong for DUers to argue it.

[William769]

12. Sure as long as you will take Hillary's experience back to 1972.

During Watergate.