Rivals target Clinton on experience
Scrutiny increases as she touts her role as first lady
DES MOINES - Senator Barack Obama's recent decision to challenge Hillary Clinton's claims of governing "experience" stemming from her days as first lady has split her two most aggressive challengers, with Obama suggesting she deserves meager credit for her husband's presidency and John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, arguing she should be held accountable for its flaws.
Until now, Clinton's rivals ignored the question of whether the former first lady - an unelected confidante whose role in Oval Office decision-making has thus far largely eluded the public record - should be judged by voters as a senior administration official or a bystanding presidential relative.
Initially, Obama and Edwards accepted Clinton's stipulation of her own experience drawn from years inside the White House, instead taking issue with her character, political style, and ability to win.
But last week, in unusually biting language, Obama began to forcefully question how much White House experience Clinton was entitled to list on her résumé. "My understanding was that she wasn't treasury secretary in the Clinton administration," Obama said, before suggesting that his wife, Michelle, should not be able to brag of a senatorial record because of her proximity to him.
Now, as Bill Clinton campaigns this week for Hillary, the years they spent in the White House, which many Democrats recall fondly while lamenting some missed opportunities, are receiving increasingly intense scrutiny from her challengers.
Both Obama and Edwards portrayed their common rival as a veteran of Beltway culture, albeit with two different emphases: Obama highlighting her role in the capital's partisan conflict and Edwards her accommodationist attitude toward Republicans.
To make his point, Obama in early October even quoted a long-ago comment by Bill Clinton about the "right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience."
In the same speech, in Concord, N.H., Obama said, "You need someone who will tell the truth - not be slick, not triangulate, not maneuver," invoking buzzwords often used critically in reference to Clinton's governing style.
But Obama now argues that Hillary Clinton should be seen less as an agent of her husband's timid and centrist policies than as an incidental appendage to them.
"I think the fact of the matter is that Senator Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it," Obama said Monday night on ABC News.
Clinton has joked about the "scars" she has from her failed healthcare fight in 1993, but has done little to illuminate the role she played in other aspects of the administration's domestic and economic policy. Often, as in the case of her healthcare quip, Clinton appears to be boasting of her valor in political battles more than her accomplishments in governing.
Nonetheless, those assertions have been essential to Clinton's pitch, and appear to be a source of strength for her among primary voters. A Globe poll of New Hampshire Democrats and independents earlier this month showed 47 percent saying Clinton had the "most experience," compared with 14 percent for Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, 10 percent for Edwards, and 4 percent for Obama.
Clinton responded to Obama's criticism by mocking his own limited experience - less, according to a Clinton spokesman, "than any president since World War II - and his assertion that having grown up abroad gives him a global perspective."
"Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face," Clinton said last week.
Recently her campaign has begun as well to highlight visits she made to 82 countries as first lady, travels that Clinton said on Sunday made her the "face of America." Clinton was defending a comment by a supporter, Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, that she was the "face of the administration in foreign affairs."
Edwards has been happy to credit Clinton with being the administration's face on domestic and economic affairs, suggesting she is a full inheritor of Clintonian centrism.
"Senator Clinton's White House experience, which includes supporting NAFTA that cost America millions of jobs, her failed universal healthcare attempt that left millions of American families without universal healthcare, these and other serious issues are valid questions for voters - that the Clinton campaign does not want to address them is not surprising given their lack of good answers," Edwards spokesman Chris Kofinis said.
The debate's shift to experience marks a move to friendlier turf for second-tier candidates like Richardson, who is a former congressman and Cabinet secretary; Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware; and Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. The three have struggled for attention while arguing their qualifications exceed that of the troika leading in the polls. Biden has spent 35 years in the Senate and Dodd 27. Clinton has served for seven years, Edwards for six, and Obama three.
"Both senators Clinton and Obama have obvious limitations when it comes to experience," said Biden spokesman Mark Paustenbach. "With respect to both of them, only Biden has shown he knows what to do with the major issues we're facing overseas." 