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Hillary Clinton walks policy tightrope between past, present

April 15, 2008

On issues as diverse as global trade and Iraq, Hillary Clinton has steered away from her husband's White House legacy or repositioned herself, prompting claims she lacks core convictions.

Hillary Clinton

But Clinton's backers say her Democratic foe Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have also shifted positions, and maintain she held to much tougher scrutiny by the media.

Unlike freshman senator Obama, Clinton has a long public record rivals can comb for flip flops: and she is uniquely vulnerable, as a presidential candidate who's husband was once president.

The New York Senator has taken credit for some successes of the 1993-2001 Clinton White House — too many according to her rival Barack Obama.

But her subsequent careful positioning, especially on global free trade, is also a sign of how the dynamics of US politics have shifted, in the seven acrimonious years since the Clintons left the White House.

The former first lady is currently attacking Obama, after he suggested that some working class Americans turned to guns or religion because they were bitter at their economic plight.

She suggested Obama was an elitist, and spoke out in favor of hunting, reminiscing how her father had taught her to fire a gun as a girl in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary on April 22, in which rural blue-collar voters are crucial.

Obama rejected Clinton's embrace of hunting, comparing her to legendary sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and implicitly suggesting she was adopting a pro-hunting stance simply for political gain.

"Hillary Clinton is out there like she's out in a duck blind every Sunday, she is packing a six shooter — come on she knows better," Obama said in Steelton, Pennsylvania.

People who see Clinton as political chameleon might have taken exception to a remark at a CNN values forum Sunday, when she suggested former Democratic nominees Al Gore and John Kerry had lost because they were seen as elitist.

She said "large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand, or relate to, or frankly respect their ways of life."

The gun spat followed the furious campaign row over free trade — especially the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) grouping the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Bill Clinton championed the deal, was an avowed free trader, and also pushed permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China, and trade liberalization with Vietnam and Singapore.

But given a globalization backlash in key electoral states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton has tacked away from her husband's legacy — and frequently attacked China.

"You know, as smart as my husband is, he does make mistakes," Clinton said in Pittsburgh on Monday, when told by an audience member that her husband had betrayed workers by fighting for NAFTA.

Both Clinton and Obama have pledged to reopen NAFTA, if elected, to make it more palatable to US workers.

The Obama campaign has savaged Clinton over NAFTA and complained her former chief strategist Mark Penn actively lobbied for the Colombian government on a US free trade pact she opposed which was shelved by Congress last week.

"You can't spend the better part of two decades campaigning for NAFTA and PNTR for China, and then come here to Pennsylvania, and tell the steelworkers you've been with them all along," Obama said Monday.

"You can't say you are opposed to the Colombia Trade deal, while your key strategist is working for the Colombian government to get the deal passed."

Obama has also accused Clinton of political expediency on Iraq.

The New York senator voted to authorize the invasion in 2002, but has since emerged as a fierce critic of the unpopular war, and vowed to bring US troops home as "quickly and responsibly as possible" if she wins the election.

Obama opposed the war, though was not in the Senate at the time and did not face the same extreme political pressure after the September 11 attacks in 2001, an era of heightened national security tensions.

The Clinton campaign accuses Obama of trading on his Iraq war opposition — but of doing little to thwart Bush's war policy once he arrived in the Senate, in 2005.

Source:  AFP

Posted by Justin Thyme · Filed Under Campaign Finance, Editorials/Opinion, Hillary Clinton 

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