Opinion: Obama antiwar speech becomes fodder for Clinton
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With the Democratic presidential race seemingly settled into a two-person battle (sorry, John Edwards), Hillary Clinton is honing her arguments against Barack Obama. She spotlighted one Sunday during her ‘Meet the Press’ appearance and -- with a nod to Walter Mondale’s famed (and effective) ‘Where’s the beef’ line against Gary Hart in the party’s 1984 tiff -- the case she made against him can be characterized as: ‘There’s only a speech.’
The address in question was the one he gave in early October 2002 opposing an American invasion of Iraq. Clinton and her aides long have chafed over the mileage he has gotten from it, given the difference in their stature at the time.
He was an obscure state senator in Illinois, representing a district in Chicago with a strong antiwar constituency. She was a high-profile U.S. senator from New York, which suffered the most grievous losses on 9/11. He did not face a vote on the Iraq issue. She did, and later that October supported the congressional resolution that paved the way for the war a few months later.
From the start of his White House bid, Obama and his supporters have pointed to the 2002 speech (posted here on his campaign website) as the prime example that good judgment trumps experience. But Sunday, Clinton decided to try to use it for her own purposes, asserting that it demonstrates Obama may be long on rhetoric, but he’s short on accomplishment.
‘The story of his campaign is really the story of that speech and his opposition to Iraq,’ she told ‘Meet the Press’ moderator Tim Russert just a few minutes into the program....
‘I think it is fair to ask questions about, ‘Well, what did you do after the speech was over?’ And when he became a (U.S.) senator, he didn’t go to the floor of the Senate to condemn the war in Iraq for 18 months. He didn’t introduce legislation against the war in Iraq. He voted against timelines and deadlines initially,’ she said.
As the lengthy interview proceed, twice more she returned -- in a somewhat scoffing manner -- to the speech Obama so frequently mentions himself with such pride.
‘Look, if you are running for president based primarily on a speech you gave in 2002 and speeches you have given since, most notably at the Democratic convention, then I think it is fair to say we need to know more beyond the words,’ she said.
And again: ‘The story of his campaign is premised on that speech.’
Before Sunday, it was her husband, Bill Clinton, who most publicly had sought to take the glow off Obama’s early opposition to the war. His remarks were made Monday in New Hampshire, and at the time were widely seen as a petulant response to his wife’s expected loss to Obama the next day in the state’s primary.
What happened, of course, was an upset win for her. And with that now has come a full-throated effort by Camp Clinton to depreciate a key Obama asset.
You can watch the Clinton interview here.
-- Don Frederick