Hillary Clinton offers voters a very compelling pitch about her years of service in public life, which invariably leads to poll results showing her with large leads over her competitors on the issue of experience. But part of this, of course, includes her eight years as First Lady, which historically has been far more of a ceremonial position than a substantive one.
So, do those eight years count? The NYT has a front-page piece on the subject today.
As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.
But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.
And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.
In some ways, this may not matter. For one thing, Clinton has been a capable, respected senator for eight years, and doesn’t necessarily have to lean on her work in the 1990s to highlight her presidential qualifications. For another, Clinton may not have had a role in the White House’s handling of foreign policy and national security, but part of her pitch suggests she gained valuable insights, simply by virtue of being there — she saw the pressure, took the shots, and knows as well as anyone what to expect. It’s why Clinton frequently reminds voters about her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.”
But it’s that next step — Clinton has foreign policy experience because of her years as First Lady — that may be something of a stretch.
Asked to name three major foreign policy decisions where she played a decisive role as first lady, Mrs. Clinton responded in generalities more than specifics, describing her strategic roles on trips to Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, India, Africa and Latin America.
Asked to cite a significant foreign policy object lesson from the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton also replied with broad observations. “There are a lot of them,” she said. “The whole unfortunate experience we’ve had with the Bush administration, where they haven’t done what we’ve needed to do to reach out to the rest of the world, reinforces my experience in the 1990s that public diplomacy, showing respect and understanding of people’s different perspectives — it’s more likely to at least create the conditions where we can exercise our values and pursue our interests.”
It’s probably fair to say that John Edwards and Barack Obama would offer very similar answers, sans the “experience on the 1990s” phrase.
On the other hand, Clinton probably couldn’t help but gain unique insights on the process.
Friends of Mrs. Clinton say that she acted as adviser, analyst, devil’s advocate, problem-solver and gut check for her husband, and that she has an intuitive sense of how brutal the job can be. What is clear, she and others say, is that Mr. Clinton often consulted her, and that Mrs. Clinton gained experience that Mr. Obama, John Edwards and every other candidate lack — indeed, that most incoming presidents did not have.
“In the end, she was the last court of appeal for him when he was making a decision,” said Mickey Kantor, a close Clinton friend who served as trade representative and commerce secretary. “I would be surprised if there was any major decision he made that she didn’t weigh in on.”
I suppose it’s close to one of those Rorschach tests Kevin’s been talking about. If you’re sympathetic to Clinton, her eight years in the White House offer her the kind of experience and insights that few presidential candidates can even hope to match. If you’re unsympathetic, Clinton shouldn’t count her eight years in a ceremonial position in which she made practically no substantive decisions relating to foreign policy or national security, did not receive intelligence briefings, and did not, as some former officials put it, “feel or process the weight of responsibility.”
It’s the same background, but it’s up to you which version to prefer.