Stumping in Pa., Democrats push their Iraq strategies
Following on the Iraq war debate on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the Democratic presidential hopefuls took the issue yesterday to Pennsylvania, site of the next nomination showdown.
Hillary Clinton went first, using past statements by Republican John McCain and a former adviser to Democratic rival Barack Obama to frame voters' choice this way:
One candidate (McCain) wants to keep US troops in Iraq for as long as 100 years, one candidate (Obama) says he wants to withdraw from Iraq but it might be "just words," and one candidate (her) is "ready, willing, and able" to end the war.
"You can count on me to end the war safely and responsibly," she said before a town hall meeting in Aliquippa, Pa.
McCain has taken pains to clarify that his 100 years remark is about a peacekeeping mission in which US troops would not be in harm's way.
Former Obama adviser Samantha Power said in interviews in Britain last month that Obama's withdrawal plan was a "best-case scenario" that he would revisit once in office. Obama has said she wasn't speaking for him and has reiterated that he plans to complete a phased withdrawal of US combat troops within 16 months of taking office.
At a town hall meeting in Malvern, Pa., Obama bashed both Clinton and McCain for voting to authorize the war.
Referring to a Clinton TV ad in which she suggested she was more qualified than Obama to answer a 3 a.m. call on a national security crisis, he said, "The person you want answering the phone at 3 a.m. is the person who has read the intelligence reports, who is asking the tough questions about why we want to invade a country like Iraq that had nothing to do with 9/11. That's somebody who has good judgment. And there's only one out of the remaining candidates who qualifies on that front."
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She said she will do all she can to defeat the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, now before Congress, even though her husband and her recently demoted chief strategist, Mark Penn, have worked for it.
"I have a long record of being on a different attitude toward trade than my husband," Clinton told reporters. "I don't think any married couple I know agrees on everything. And we disagree on this."
Bill Clinton, who championed deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement during his presidency, pushed Democrats to be more open to low barriers to trade. In 2005, the former president was paid $800,000 by Gold Service International, a Bogota-based business development group that supports the Colombia deal, for four days of appearances in Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.
Obama and Hillary Clinton have criticized such trade deals in their bid for blue-collar voters in states including Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22.
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"That was an important decision by Prime Minister Brown and I am calling on Senators McCain and Obama to join me in my request that President Bush also not attend the opening ceremonies," she said at the Irish American Forum in New York.
Clinton said earlier this week the president should boycott the ceremonies to register discontent with China's actions in Tibet and Darfur. Neither John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, nor Democratic competitor Barack Obama have followed suit.
Obama this week expressed concern about Tibet and Darfur, but ABC reported yesterday that Obama could be conflicted on the issue because his home city of Chicago is bidding for the 2016 Summer Olympics and because a senior adviser is involved in that bid. McCain, through his campaign, said yesterday that Bush "should evaluate the situation as it evolves" before deciding on the ceremonies.
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Bill Clinton tells readers of "US Weekly" magazine he was so lonely after their daughter left that his wife got him a dog, Buddy. "She always seems to know the answer to every problem!" he writes.
The former president and Michelle Obama wrote personal appeals on behalf of their spouses in the issue that hits newsstands tomorrow.
Michelle Obama wrote about how she was hesitant about her husband, Barack Obama, getting into the presidential race.
"But when I took off my selfish hat, and I put on my mom hat and my professional hat and my woman hat and my citizen hat, I realized that if I weren't married to him, I'd want a Barack Obama presidency right now - not in four or eight years, but now," she says.
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