(Hillary Clinton poses with fifth and sixth graders after speaking at the Elkhader Opera House on Thursday.)
by Jason George
ELKHADER, Iowa – Each day that Sen. Hillary Clinton has campaigned this week, her stump speech has held a different theme: the economy, her personality, and improving healthcare, which she highlighted at a stop here yesterday afternoon.
Yet in every talk along her tour, which ends today, Clinton and her surrogates have kept one thread running through all her speeches: that she has the decades of experience "working for change" – the slogan of her current Iowa swing – that is necessary to be the nation's next president.
To back up that claim Clinton starts her timeline of public service 35 years ago, when she became a staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund. (A childhood friend from Park Ridge placed it even earlier, when she said at a Monday rally in Johnston that Clinton had been a leader since the 6th grade crossing guard corps.)
Either way, Clinton benefits here, given the fact that those events occurred long before her two chief rivals were adults. Consider that when Clinton started her first year at the CDF in 1973, Former Sen. John Edwards was a junior in college and Sen. Barack Obama had just entered the seventh grade.
For Clinton, being the candidate of "proven leadership" is a role that would've seemed unimaginable before the other frontrunners emerged – her seven years in elected office hardly stack up against candidates like Senators Chris Dodd or Joe Biden.
One wonders if had a candidate like Dodd or Biden had emerged as a frontrunner, what course Clinton would've charted. Presumably, she would've painted herself as the fresh candidate of major change if elected; but as it stands now, Sen. Obama has this market cornered.
If Clinton wins the Democratic nominee, she might have to shift gears again, returning to the idea that having a woman in the Whitehouse, whose experience is mostly out of elected office, makes her the candidate of hope and a new beginning. Only Gov. Mitt Romney of the Republican frontrunners has spent less time in an elected capacity.
Clinton's communications director Howard Wolfson said in an interview that it's just too early to know how Clinton would run, if nominated, but don't expect a major change in highlighting her work with the CDF, on healthcare in 1993 and the numerous bills she's sponsored or co-sponsored in her two terms in the Senate.
"We have not gamed out what a general election strategy will be," he said.
"Her record will always be important though."
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Comments
More negative attacks on Hillary by Obama's "surrogate" the Swamp.
Posted by: Biggdawg | December 20, 2007 12:26 PM
Biden is the choice leader with experience and a pragmatic world view. Being married for 35 years to Bill Clinton is certainly an experience of a kind.
Posted by: S Canning | December 20, 2007 2:24 PM
I don't understand why, every time Clinton talks about experience, someone doesn't ask her if she considers herself more experienced than Richardson, Biden and Dodd? If she says yes, she would have to defend it. If she says no, then she should shut the blank up about experience!
Posted by: Paul | December 20, 2007 2:25 PM
Hillary's experience? Let's see. Covering up for her husband's dalliance with an intern? Covering up the missing billing records from her law firm? Covering up the discovery of the FBI files of their political enemies? Covering up for her total absence of memory before a Grand Jury? Covering up for the character assault on Obama? Yes, Hilly has lots of experience, just none as an executive.
Posted by: Geraldine | December 20, 2007 6:03 PM
Hillary talks about her "experience," but doesn't come up with any concrete examples of executive leadership. Why? Because there are none. She has never held an executive position in even as much as a soup kitchen. And when she was given a coordinator role on an important subject, national health care, she botched it so badly that even the leaders of her own party in charge of the Congress would not allow it to come to a vote.
Posted by: LaVerne | December 20, 2007 8:54 PM
Hillary is delusional about her experience for President..first off, no nominee has that experience; it acquired during the actual role of bing president! She is so full of egotism and hot are it is pathetic. Unfortunately, the Clinton lovers love wearing their blindfolds and earplugs and follow the Clintons like sheep!! The Clintons have a history of crime and drug trafficing in Mena, Ark when he was governor...check out "The Clinton Chronicles"
Posted by: Nina | December 21, 2007 1:08 AM
Hillary is delusional about her experience for President..first off, no nominee has that experience; it acquired during the actual role of bing president! She is so full of egotism and hot are it is pathetic. Unfortunately, the Clinton lovers love wearing their blindfolds and earplugs and follow the Clintons like sheep!! The Clintons have a history of crime and drug trafficing in Mena, Ark when he was governor...check out "The Clinton Chronicles"
Posted by: Nina | December 21, 2007 1:10 AM
Since Biden, Dodd and Richardson are actually running, they can highlight their own experience.
For Biden, Dodd, and Richardson supporters, THEIR experience is the experience that counts.
As a Clinton supporter, I appreciate her experience with the Children's Defense Fund. If you don't, you don't.
So be it.
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Geraldine, did you NEED Clinton to tell you all about her private life?
I can't understand why Republicans are so interested in other people's sex lifes.
(Maybe it's because their sex lives all seem to play out in public men's rooms?)
Geraldine, the rest of what you've listed is Clinton Hater Talking Points.
For example, how do you know this: "Covering up for her total absence of memory before a Grand Jury?"
GRAND JURY TESTIMOMY IS SECRET. You have ZERO idea what she said to a Grand Jury.
That makes you a liar.
Posted by: Jan | December 21, 2007 7:23 AM