Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton took quite a bit of heat over a WaPo report in which she seemed to hedge on U.S. policy on torture. I think the criticisms were largely off-base — the WaPo article included a misleading paraphrase and a transcript showed her taking a much firmer position than the article let on.
This one, though, strikes me as a little more problematic.
Hillary Rodham Clinton called Barack Obama naive when he said he’d meet with the leaders of Iran without precondition. Now she says she’d do the same thing, too.
During a Democratic presidential debate in July, Obama said he would be willing to meet without precondition in the first year of his presidency with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.
Standing with him on stage, Clinton said she would first send envoys to test the waters and called Obama’s position irresponsible and naive.
But asked about it Thursday by a voter, the New York senator said twice that she, too, would negotiate with Iran “with no conditions.”
Specifically, a voter asked whether Clinton believed it was “acceptable” if Iran acquired a nuclear bomb. Clinton explained the problems associated with such a development, before saying, “I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don’t really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading.”
Now, Clinton’s vote on a resolution regarding Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has been controversial enough, but this is obviously different: wasn’t there a big hullabaloo in July over this? With Clinton on the other side?
As readers may recall, during the YouTube debate, a questioner asked whether, “in the spirit of…bold leadership,” the candidates would be willing to meet “without precondition, during the first year of your administration,” with leaders of rival nations, including Iran. Obama went first, and said he would. “[T]he notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.”
Clinton followed, but demurred. She noted that she wouldn’t “be used for propaganda purposes,” and said a U.S. president shouldn’t meet with leaders from countries like Iran “until we know better what the way forward would be.”
The real fireworks came a day later, when the Clinton campaign blasted Obama for his response, calling his willingness to engage in diplomacy without precondition “irresponsible and frankly naive.”
Today, Clinton believes the U.S. should talk to Iran “with no conditions”?
The campaign doesn’t see a contradiction, and my friend Peter Daou posted a complete transcript, but given the Clinton campaign’s response in July, I think today’s remarks count as a mistake.
We’ll see what, if anything, comes of it.
Update: Edwards and Obama, naturally, think Clinton contradicted herself, but Ben Smith doesn’t, the NYT doesn’t, and the AP changed its lede.