Clinton Sticks to Her Script in Whirlwind Tour of Shows

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton faced the Sunday morning firing line for the first time since she declared that she is running for president, and the New York senator repeated standard talking points on the Iraq war, her health care plan, an antiwar group's advertisement attacking the U.S. commander in Iraq, the criminal background of a major campaign donor and her overall electability.

Clinton, who was on each broadcast network's show along with CNN's "Late Edition," defended her campaign for taking donations from a Democratic fundraiser who now faces fraud charges. Norman Hsu brought in $850,000 to the Clinton campaign; the money has been sent back to their donors who gave it to him. Clinton said her campaign closely monitors who is contributing -- "We try to ... vet everyone," she added -- but the fact that Hsu was wanted on grand theft charges simply slipped through the cracks.

"[I]t wasn't only my campaign," she said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "It was more than two dozen campaigns. A lot of people who invested and were involved in other ways were not aware of the outstanding warrant for him."

Clinton was questioned closely and often about Iraq, including her pledge not to vote for any legislation to fund the war until President Bush advocates a change in strategy. Clinton acknowledged she has moved away from her previous stance rejecting the idea of a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops.

"The circumstances on the ground have certainly compelled me to evaluate what's in the best interests for our country and our troops," she said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Clinton called her 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq "sincere," taking responsibility for it, but said the situation in Iraq at the time was "hard to determine." She added, as she has before, "If I had known then what I know now ... I would not have voted the way that I did."

"The real question for us today is, what do we do going forward," she said.

On CNN, she repeated a line from her stump speech, vowing that if Bush "does not extricate us from Iraq before the end of his term, when I am president, I will, as quickly and responsibly as I can."

Clinton said she had no doubt that "we're going to be withdrawing from Iraq, because the Iraqi government has not fulfilled its part of the bargain, which was to make the tough political decisions."

But she would not say whether she can pledge to remove all troops would return home from Iraq over her first four years as president. "I'm not going to get into hypotheticals and make pledges, because I don't know what I'm going to inherit," she said.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos noted on "This Week" that actress Sally Field said at last week's Emmy Awards that "if the mothers ruled the world, there would be no ... wars," then asked Clinton, "Are mothers less likely to take nations to war?"

"[W]e've had women in positions of leadership in countries around the world. Some have, some haven't," she responded. "I think it's more important that the person make the right decisions about what we should be doing."

Clinton said her recently announced plan to provide health care coverage to the 47 million who lack it is "much different" from her ill-fated health care proposal in 1993 and 1994 because it does not create a new bureaucracy and it allows Americans who are satisfied with their health insurance can keep it.

But more than six years in the Senate has taught her that any ambitious health plan must involve both the executive branch and the legislative branch, she said.

"I'm very confident we can put together the kind of bipartisan coalition" needed to overhaul the health care system, she added, but when asked about criticism of her plan by GOP presidential contender Rudolph Giuliani, Clinton lashed out across the aisle. "[T]he Republicans were attacking my plan before it ever came out. And back to the same old tired rhetoric," she said. "This is not government-run health care. This creates not a single new government bureaucracy. ... I challenge the Republicans to come forth with a plan that will cover every American, control costs and improve quality. That is what my plan will do. And I'm waiting to see what their plans are."

Clinton said she condemns and does not condone a recent ad in the New York Times by the antiwar group MoveOn.org that asked whether Gen. David H. Petraeus should be considered "General Betray Us."

"I did vote for a [Senate] resolution that made it clear I do not condone and do condemn attacks on any American, impugning their patriotism, and that includes people like Senator Max Cleland and Senator John Kerry," she said on "Fox News Sunday," citing two Democratic war veterans who were the subject of hard-hitting attack ads.

As to her electability next fall, Clinton noted she was supported by a wide margin in the redder regions of New York State last November. "I won reelection with nearly 67 percent of the vote, carrying a lot of the same counties that George Bush had carried just two years before. I've been able to get a lot of Republican and independent support in this campaign. I know how to seek and find common ground, but I also know how to stand my ground," she said.

CBS's Bob Schieffer asked Clinton whether her husband, former president Bill Clinton, would serve in a policy-making role in her administration.

"No," she replied flatly. "And among the many lessons that I have learned, we want to be sure that the president, my husband, does whatever he can, just as I tried to do whatever I could, and I think he has a very special and important role in reaching out to the rest of the world."

An Encore Appearance for the Maestro

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan also appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press." And at the end of the show, he offered some interesting insights when asked some rapid-fire questions about the presidents he served:

• Smartest president? Greenspan said it was a "tossup" between Clinton and Richard Nixon. "They are both extraordinarily intelligent," but Greenspan said he was especially struck by Clinton's ability to recall by memory virtually his entire State of the Union speech when his Teleprompters malfunctioned.

• Most profane? Nixon "by multiples."

• Normal? Gerald Ford, "one of the most decent people I've met."

• Least knowledgeable about economics? "They were all to a greater or lesser extent fairly knowledgeable."

• Applied the most political pressure? George H.W. Bush.

Greenspan denied that, through his testimony to Congress, he was an enabler of President George W. Bush's tax cuts. He criticizes the effect of those tax cuts on the federal deficit in his just-released autobiography.

Perhaps feigning a bit of convenient modesty, Greenspan rejected the "notion that I was extraordinarily powerful and my word carried great weight," citing his warnings on a range of other issues, particularly Medicare reform, that went unheeded.

He said he generally favors tax cuts and the 2001 tax cut was particularly attractive because the federal budget surpluses forecast at that time would be problematic for investment and economic growth. But Greenspan said he changed his mind when it became clear that the federal government was violating rules for ensuring that any tax cuts were meant with equal reductions in spending.

He said he does not think either political party has not done much positive to protect the country's fiscal future. He said he is not very worried about Social Security, but "Medicare is a wholly different issue." He said with the boom of retirements expected in the next few decades, "it's very evident to me that we are not going to be able to actually deliver on the Medicare we are promising" - a circumstance he called "immoral."

"We are promising to people who have not yet retired a fairly significant Medicare package, which if they knew they weren't going to get would take actions now," he said.

Greenspan put the odds of recession below 50 percent, though he agreed with the widely held view that the economy is heading toward a slowdown. He rejected the notion that he had encouraged the housing and mortgage bubble by suggesting that some people consider adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate mortgages. He said such remarks had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage lending mess that has roiled Wall Street and the global credit markets.

He defended his statement in the autobiography that the "Iraq war was largely about oil." He said Saddam Hussein had for 30 years been angling to take control of the Middle East's oil reserves and, if he ever got a nuclear weapon, would have leveraged it to do so. He added that Saddam "would never have gotten the wherewithal, the resources, to effectively threaten his neighbors" if "there were no oil under the sands of Iraq." That said, Greenspan said the idea of preemptive war to protect economic interests presents a "very significant moral problem."

The Bush administration has reacted sharply to Greenspan's recent criticisms, but he said he hasn't seen his personal relationships with administration figures fray over his new statements. "Nothing of what I say could come as a surprise to anybody," Greenspan said.

-- Zachary A. Goldfarb

By Post Editor |  September 23, 2007; 2:21 PM ET
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