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Gloves off in Obama vs. Clinton |
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By Aaron Blake
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Posted: 07/25/07 10:38 PM [ET] |
The top two Democratic presidential candidates took very public aim at each other Tuesday, engaging in a war of words over diplomacy in the aftermath of Monday’s debate.
In perhaps their most pitched battle yet, Sen. Barack Obama’s (Ill.) campaign attacked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (N.Y.) record on the Iraq war and accused her of harboring an inconsistent stance on meeting with foreign leaders.
Clinton’s campaign asserted that Obama was haphazardly committing to meet with foreign dictators.
Clinton also called Obama’s comments “irresponsible” and “naïve” in an interview with The Quad-City Times in Iowa on Tuesday. In the same story, Obama responded that it was “irresponsible and naïve” to vote for the war in Iraq, as Clinton did in 2002.
In response to a question at Monday night’s CNN/YouTube debate in Charleston, S.C., Obama said he would be willing to meet with the leaders of some of the United States’s antagonists — Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela — within a year of taking office and without preconditions.
Clinton was much more reserved in her response, stressing that a president must know the leaders’ intentions first, so as to not become a tool for propaganda.
Obama has long trailed Clinton by double digits in the national polls and has failed to gain much ground since he entered the race. With the notable exception of a public feud over Hollywood media mogul David Geffen’s comments in February, their public discourse has stayed predominantly above the fray.
Obama’s campaign circulated a memorandum Tuesday morning that pulled few punches in attacking Clinton’s foreign policy record. Clinton’s campaign then dispatched former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to go to bat for it a conference call.
Expanding on a line of attack Obama began to broach in Monday’s debate, his campaign said that Clinton “did nothing to dispel questions that have arisen as a result of her support for the war in Iraq.”
“When pressed, she gave no explanation for not demanding an exit strategy before we invaded a country riven by deep ethnic rivalries that portended civil war and a long, uncertain occupation,” the memo said. “Obama warned of such an outcome in 2002, and said the war would undermine us in the battle against al Qaeda, as has now proven true.”
The memo also accused Clinton of reversing her position on meeting with foreign leaders.
In April, The Associated Press reported that Clinton said: “I think it is a terrible mistake for our president to say he will not talk with bad people.”
In a memo responding to Obama’s, Clinton’s campaign noted that her response at the debate didn’t preclude meeting with those leaders, but did set out a number of qualifiers.
Clinton’s memo asserted a “clear difference” between the two candidates.
“Sen. Obama has committed to presidential-level meetings with some of the world’s worst dictators without precondition during his first year in office,” the memo said. “Sen. Clinton is committed to vigorous diplomacy but understands that it is a mistake to commit the power and prestige of America’s presidency years ahead of time by making such a blanket commitment.”
On a conference call, Albright echoed those sentiments when asked about Obama’s criticism but made only an oblique reference to Obama.
“I think that [Clinton’s is] not a kind of a knee-jerk reaction; it is a sophisticated and very consistent reaction to what she’s been saying,” Albright said.
Obama’s campaign later sent an e-mail to supporters containing two videos — one of his past statements against the Iraq war and another of him responding to Clinton at Monday’s debate. In the latter clip, Obama said that senators should have asked for an exit strategy before they voted for the war.
After the debate, Obama adviser David Axelrod made the case that his candidate’s pledge was not absolute and that Obama would not necessarily meet with the foreign leaders personally.
According to a transcript of the debate, Obama was asked if he would be willing to meet “separately, without precondition, during the first year” of his presidency “with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?”
“I would,” Obama said. “And the reason is this — that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”
Clinton declined to offer such a promise: “We’re not going to just have our president meet with [Cuba’s] Fidel Castro and [Venezuela’s] Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.”
Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who stands third in most national polls, said he agreed with Clinton’s response.
Late in the day, Obama’s campaign countered Albright with a defense from Tony Lake, a former national security advisor under President Bill Clinton.
“A great nation and its president should never fear negotiating with anyone, and Sen. Obama rightly said he would be willing to do so as Richard Nixon did with China and Ronald Reagan did with the Soviet Union,” Lake said.
The two campaigns also got into a public scuffle in February, when Clinton demanded Obama return Geffen’s contributions after Geffen disparaged her.
They also engaged over Clinton’s financial disclosures in June. Obama subsequently apologized for a memo crafted by his campaign staff that was critical of Clinton’s record on outsourcing.
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