"Clinton Vows to Help Oust Bush"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXXVIII

Hillary Clinton mouths off in a rather well-balanced article in the Albany Times-Union, Dec. 11.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday to campaign nationwide to help defeat President Bush, calling the Republican and his administration a threat to the United States.

"I can't maybe even convey it as strongly as I feel, how dangerous this administration is to the future of our country," Clinton said.

From the economy and the environment to health care and government accountability, Clinton said she sees "giant steps backward, and much of it is being done under the rubric of security."

Clinton was in Troy on Wednesday morning, first at a fund-raiser for the Rensselaer County Democratic Committee, then at a conference on small businesses. She later met with the Times Union editorial board in Colonie.

A day after former Vice President Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton remained mum on who, she considers the best candidate to take on Bush, although many consider retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark to be the Clintons' choice.

"My goal is to support first the process," she said. "Let it be vigorous, let people be contesting in the primary and the caucuses, because I think the more vigorous the primary process is, the better prepared whoever emerges from it will be to take on the President."

She said Gore's endorsement doesn't mean Dean has locked up the nomination. Historically, Clinton said, primaries have been "extremely unpredictable."

"Twelve years ago, in December 1991, no one thought Bill Clinton was going to get the nomination," she said.

Clinton said she'll support any Democrat chosen.

"At the end of the day, we will have a candidate, and I am going to do everything I can to elect that person, because I feel so strongly about the need to deprive this administration of a second term," she said.

Christine Iverson, press secretary for the Republican National Committee, said her party welcomes Clinton's challenge.

"The Clintons seem to have a way of overshadowing the candidates they campaign for, rather than helping them," Iverson said, adding that Clinton and the Democrats running for president are showing a theme of "protest and pessimism."

Clinton was less hesitant to talk about a challenger to New York Gov. George Pataki, whom she accused of politicizing the modernization of New York's voting system and of holding up federal homeland security funds designated for local governments.

If New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer decides to run in 2006, he'd beat Pataki, Clinton predicted.

"We'd have an excellent chance of having a Democratic governor who would do a superb job for the state," she said.

New York Republican State Committee Chairman Alexander "Sandy" Treadwell said Clinton has no reason to be critical.

"It's absurd that Senator Clinton has the audacity to criticize Governor Pataki when she has accomplished absolutely nothing for New York state," Treadwell said, adding that Clinton hasn't brought any new jobs to New York.

Treadwell also dismissed Clinton's assertion that her colleague in the Senate, Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, won't have a serious challenger in 2004.

"We will have a very strong candidate to run against Charles Schumer," he said.

Pataki spokesman Joseph Conway said Clinton should be more concerned with bringing federal aid to New York than with state politics.

Clinton also defended her vote in favor of invading Iraq, and said the information she received from credible sources outside the Bush administration convinced her that Saddam Hussein was a threat who needed to be removed from power. But she says she did not anticipate "how poorly prepared this administration was to deal with the consequences of their actions."

She said the administration dramatically mishandled Iraq. Bush should have let U.N. inspectors continue their work, Clinton said, and committed more troops when it came time to fight. The United States should have declared martial law and had enough troops in Iraq to avoid the looting and mayhem that happened after the ground war was fought.

White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said the United States is safer under Bush, and that Iraq's infrastructure was worse than any world leader imagined going into the war.

Prewar planning, Lisaius said, avoided food shortages, displacing Iraqis and environmental crises that would have arisen from more oil fields being destroyed.

Clinton said problems there are more serious than the Bush administration has admitted.

"The fact is, they didn't have a plan," she said. "We're playing catch-up, and it has cost us dearly. And, on that ground alone, the administration, in my view, should be retired."

All Times Union materials copyright 1996-2003, Capital Newspapers Division of The Hearst Corporation, Albany, N.Y.

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Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 12/12/03 07:19:59 AM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.