Posted on 11/04/2007 3:42:43 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Summary: At a Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Sen. Hillary Clinton ducked some questions and gave misleading answers to others.
She falsely implied that the reason White House documents about her communications with her husband haven't been released is due to bureaucratic delays, and she avoided saying whether she would ask Bill Clinton to clear their release from the National Archives.
She avoided a yes-or-no answer to whether she supports giving New York driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and at one point denied saying the idea made sense, when in fact she said less than two weeks earlier that it "makes a lot of sense."
She avoided saying what, if anything, she would do about Social Security taxes or benefits, saying a commission should study the system "if" it has problems, and saying that acting as though the troubled system is in "crisis" is "a Republican trap."
Analysis
The most recent debate among Democratic candidates took place Oct. 30 at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Absent this time was former Sen. Mike Gravel, who was too low in opinion polls and had raised too little money to be invited by MSNBC. The front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton, faced tough questioning from moderators Tim Russert and Brian Williams of NBC News, and from rival candidates. Her responses were often uninformative and sometimes misleading.
Release of White House Documents
Clinton avoided saying whether she'd urge her husband to tell the National Archives to release documents related to her communications with him while he was president.
Clinton: Well, actually, Tim, the Archives is moving as rapidly as the Archives moves. There's about 20 million pieces of paper there and they are moving, and they are releasing as they do their process. And I am fully in favor of that.
Russert pressed: Russert: But there was a letter written by President Clinton specifically asking that any communication between you and the president not be made available to the public until 2012. Would you lift that ban?
Clinton: Well, that's not my decision to make. And I don't believe that any president or first lady has. But certainly we'll move as quickly as our circumstances and the processes of the National Archives permits.
We find her response doubly misleading.
First, the primary reason that no documents related to correspondence between the two of them have been made public is, just as Russert said, that Bill Clinton asked the Archives not to release them until 2012. The Presidential Records Act allows a president, while still in office, to bar disclosure of six categories of documents for 12 years following the end of his or her tenure. One of those categories is “confidential communications requesting or submitting advice, between the President and his advisers.” Communications between a president and his wife are considered to fall in that category. He claimed the exemptions broadly (without mentioning Hillary) in 1994. In 2002, he amended his claims to loosen the restrictions – but specifically identified communications between himself and the First Lady (among others) as items that should remain sealed until 2012.
Secondly, while Hillary is correct in a legal sense when she says it is "not my decision to make," we have little doubt that her husband would do as she asked should she want the documents made public.
Sen. Clinton is correct on one front: Things are moving slowly at the Clinton Library. According to a declaration filed by the Clinton Presidential Library's then-acting director, Emily Robison, in August 2007, there are just six archivists to sort through what the library's Web site says are 76.8 million pages and 1.85 million photos. Even if she wanted her correspondence with Bill Clinton released, it's not clear that the documents would be processed before the election.
But while she may also be correct that other presidents haven’t allowed access to communications between themselves and their wives before the 12 years were up, none of those wives were running for president themselves – and holding out their experience in the White House as a qualification for election.
Driver's Licenses for Illegal Immigrants
Clinton bobbed and weaved on whether illegal immigrants should be granted driver's licenses, avoiding a yes-or-no answer but denying her own words in the process.
Russert asked her about an interview she had given to an editorial board in Nashua, New Hampshire, in which she was asked about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's proposal to grant state driver's licenses to immigrants who are in the U.S. without legal permission.
Clinton: I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it. And we have failed –
Sen. Chris Dodd: Wait a minute. No, no, no. You said yes, you thought it made sense to do it.
Clinton: No, I didn't, Chris. But the point is, what are we going to do with all these illegal immigrants who are (driving ?) – (inaudible)?
Actually, we checked the video, and Clinton did tell the Nashua Telegraph interviewers on Oct. 17 that Spitzer's plan "makes a lot of sense," despite her denial to Dodd. Clinton (Nashua, N.H.): I know exactly what Governor Spitzer’s trying to do and it makes a lot of sense. He’s trying to get people out of the shadows.
During the debate, Clinton repeatedly said immigration should be dealt with nationally, not on a state-by-state basis. But after a long exchange she still hadn't answered the question to Russert's satisfaction:
Russert: Do you support [Spitzer's] plan?
Clinton: You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha. It makes a lot of sense. What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. ... Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this? Remember, in New York we want to know who's in New York. We want people to come out of the shadows. He's making an honest effort to do it. We should have passed immigration reform.
We don't agree that asking a candidate for a specific stand on an issue is a "gotcha" question. In any event, Clinton avoided a direct answer.
Social Security
Throughout the debate Clinton resolutely avoided saying specifically what, if anything, she would do to shore up the finances of the Social Security system. She repeatedly called for "fiscal responsibility" and said she would appoint a bipartisan commission to study the system. And she made clear she was in no hurry to act:
Clinton: I think for us to act like Social Security is in crisis is a Republican trap.
In fact, the system is headed for nearly certain collapse unless some action is taken to increase taxes or at least slow down the projected rise of future benefits. And delay will only make the eventual corrections more painful, experts say.
The system's trustees state that the program is financially adequate for the short term, but fails the test of financial adequacy by a "wide margin" in the long term. Within 10 years, under the most likely projection, payroll taxes will no longer be adequate to pay for current benefits and the system will begin cashing in the IOUs that make up its trust fund. That means it will be paying for a portion of benefits out of other federal taxes, and that portion will increase year to year. At that rate the trust fund will be exhausted in 2041, at which point the payroll tax could finance only 75 percent of promised benefits, and less in each succeeding year. At that point benefits would necessarily be cut 25 percent, or taxes would be increased.
To bring the system into balance for the next 75 years would require "an immediate increase of 16 percent in payroll tax revenues or an immediate reduction in benefits of 13 percent or some combination of the two," the trustees stated. That's assuming the action is "immediate." Delaying action beyond this year will only make the needed changes more painful for future generations. The trustees said:
Social Security and Medicare Trustees (April 2007): To the extent that changes are delayed or phased in gradually, larger adjustments in scheduled benefits and revenues would be required that would be spread over fewer generations.
Nevertheless, at one point during the debate, Sen. Clinton seemed to imply that it was possible no action was needed at all, saying that "if" there are problems a commission should address them.
Clinton: If there are some of the long-term challenges that we need to address, let's do it in the context of having fiscal responsibility, and then let's put together a bipartisan commission and look at how we're going to deal with these long-term challenges.
Clinton Flip-Flops?
Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards accused Clinton of multiple flip-flops on trade, torture and Social Security:
Obama: And Senator Clinton in her campaign, I think, has been for NAFTA previously, now she's against it. She has taken one position on torture several months ago and then most recently has taken a different position.
Edwards: And then finally she said in our last debate that she was against any changes on Social Security – benefits, retirement age or raising the cap on the Social Security tax.
NAFTA: Obama is partly right concerning the North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton’s views on NAFTA have shifted, but they shifted prior to her official run for the White House. Back in 1998, in a keynote speech given at the Davos Economic Summit, Clinton praised business leaders for mounting “a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA,” adding later that “it is certainly clear that we have not by any means finished the job that has begun.” But by 2005 she was expressing reservations about free trade agreements, voting that year against the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). And she told Bloomberg News in March 2007 that, while she still believes in free trade, she supports a freeze on new trade agreements – something she calls “a little time-out.” Torture: Obama is right. In an interview with the New York Daily News in October 2006, Clinton condoned torture in what she called "improbable" ticking time bomb scenarios:
Clinton: In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the President, and the President must be held accountable. That very, very narrow exception within very, very limited circumstances is better than blasting a big hole in our entire law.
But in a debate in New Hampshire last month, Sen. Clinton shifted her position when moderator Tim Russert offered her just such a ticking time bomb case:
Russert: Senator Clinton, this is the number three man in al Qaeda. We know there's a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?
Clinton: As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy, period.
To our ears, that sounds like a reversal.
Social Security: But in accusing Clinton of reversing course, Edwards mischaracterizes what she actually said during the September 26 debate at Dartmouth College. Moderator Tim Russert pressed Sen. Clinton on what, specifically, she was willing to “put on the table” to ensure the solvency of Social Security. Her reply:
Clinton: I'm not putting anything on the proverbial table until we move toward fiscal responsibility. I think it's a mistake to do that.
That’s not being "against any changes on Social Security" as Edwards claimed. Rather, Clinton simply refused to specify what changes she might be willing to accept.
Obama's Revised Remarks
Obama attempted to soften a previous accusation that Clinton was being less than truthful about a variety of issues.
Russert: But when asked by The New York Times whether Senator Clinton has been truthful, you said no.
Obama: What I said is that she has not been truthful and clear about this point that I just made [about Social Security], which is, we can talk about fiscal responsibility, and all of us agree with it. All of us oppose privatization. But even after we deal with those issues, we are still going to have an actuarial gap that has to be dealt with. It is not going to vanish.
Actually, the Times paraphrased Obama on October 28 as saying Clinton was being somewhat untruthful about "what she would do as president" generally, not just on Social Security:
New York Times: Asked if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, "No."
"I don't think people know what her agenda exactly is," Mr. Obama added, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been entirely forthcoming. "Now it's been very deft politically," he said. "But one of the things that I firmly believe is that we've got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we're going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election." Russert’s characterization of Obama’s quote, as featured in the Times, was accurate. Obama, however, attempts to narrow the claim down to her position on Social Security when he really referred to her statements overall regarding what she would do as president.
Presidential Qualifications
Finally, we wondered about the accuracy of this statement from Sen. Joe Biden:
Biden: Rudy Giuliani [is] probably the most underqualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency.
Biden is certainly entitled to state his opinion, and his line did get a lot of laughs and some applause. But a twice-elected former mayor of New York City is hardly without executive qualification. And does Biden really think Giuliani is less qualified than, say, cable TV comic Stephen Colbert, who is seeking signatures to qualify for the ballot in South Carolina?
Just asking.
– by Brooks Jackson, with Viveca Novak, Justin Bank, Jess Henig, Emi Kolawole, Joe Miller and Lori Robertson
Sources Office of William Jefferson Clinton. Letter to the National Archives. Presidential Libraries. 6 Nov. 2002.
Landrigan, Kevin. Clinton says gender has been advantage. Video. 17 Oct. 2007. NHPrimary.com. 31 Oct. 2007.
Jensen, Kristin and Mark Drajem. "Clinton Breaks With Husband's Legacy on Nafta Pact, China Trade." Bloomberg News. 30 Mar. 2007. 31 Oct. 2007.
Smith, Ben. "McCain Team Mocks Hil Torture Loophole." New York Daily News. 16 Oct. 2006.
Nagourney, Adam and Jeff Zeleny. "Obama Promises a forceful stand against Clinton." The New York Times. 28 Oct. 2007: A1.
"Status of the Social Security and Medicare Program, A summary of the 2007 Annual Reports." Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees 23 Apr. 2007.
I knew that Clinton could not be re-elected in 1996, after Hillary's great healthcare takeover debacle.
Now I'm just afraid for our nation.
There are more than enough really stupid voters out there to elect Hillary president. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Just three...
Cankles,
Cackle
and that hideous "goldfish" mouth she does.
Polls show that Hillary doing the politicians dance (one step forward, two steps back, side step, side step) on the debate stage has not affected her ratings one iota.
This is why conservatives must unite behind the nominee. Freeper talk of a third party if Rudy is nominated is suicide IMO.
Face your fear because the woman just envokes very strong antipathetic feelings among the electorate, enough to maybe take her down even in the primaries.
She's trying to be a centrist and because the DBM/dems have made their bed with the kooky, loonie, hate filled left, Hillary shouldn't stand a chance.
In my neck of the woods we call that lying....
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