{"id":14655,"date":"2008-02-21T13:45:44","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T18:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14655.html"},"modified":"2008-02-21T13:45:44","modified_gmt":"2008-02-21T18:45:44","slug":"clintons-experience-claims-debunked-by-congressional-quarterly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/clintons-experience-claims-debunked-by-congressional-quarterly\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton\u2019s Experience Claims Debunked by Congressional Quarterly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Ron Chusid <\/a><\/p>\n

One reason that Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign has been unsuccessful is that she has failed to provide a compelling reason for many of us to vote for her. Initially Clinton\u2019s campaign was based upon her being the inevitable winner, but that collapsed when she lost the Iowa caucus. She also claims experience as a reason to vote for her, but that argument doesn\u2019t hold up very well either. Congressional Quarterly<\/a> evaluated her claims and found they were untrue. First they reviewed her claims:<\/p>\n

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton often boasts that she has a long resume \u2014 35 years long, to be precise.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have 35 years\u2019 experience making change,\u201d she said in a TV ad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve gotten up for 35 years every day and tried to figure out what I could do to help somebody else,\u201d she said in a TV interview.<\/p>\n

Asked about the difference between her and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , she replied, \u201cWell, about 35 years of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has used the phrase \u201c35 years\u201d in at least 55 speeches, debates and interviews since 2004, according to our search of a public statements database maintained by Project Vote Smart. So it\u2019s no surprise that a Google search of \u201cHillary Clinton\u201d and \u201c35 years\u201d yields 515,000 hits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Next they determined if her claims were true:
\n<\/p>\n

In simple terms, any experience counts as experience, but it\u2019s clear from the context of Clinton\u2019s remarks that she\u2019s speaking about public policy experience, so that\u2019s how we have focused our examination. We\u2019ll start with the math.<\/p>\n

Clinton is 60, so if we assume that her 35 years were consecutive, they would have begun in 1973 when she graduated from Yale Law School at age 25. That year she joined the Children\u2019s Defense Fund, an advocacy group for children.<\/p>\n

But her math was way off when she claimed the difference with Obama is \u201c35 years of experience.\u201d By our count, Obama, who is 14 years younger than Clinton, has three years of experience as a community organizer, four years as a full-time attorney handling voting rights, employment and housing cases, and 11 years in the Illinois Senate and U.S. Senate. That\u2019s a total of 18 years. So the difference between Clinton and Obama is really 17 years. We rate her claim False.<\/p>\n

Has Clinton really awakened every morning for 35 years and \u201ctried to figure out what I could do to help somebody else,\u201d as she claims? We can\u2019t read the senator\u2019s mind, so this one\u2019s not verifiable. If she\u2019s like us, our first thought every morning is about coffee, not helping mankind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Clinton has some experience during the past thirty-five years but it is hardly sufficient to consider her more qualified to be president. Often the experience consisted of assignment to part times posts while she was primarily working in corporate law. This included sitting on the board of Wal-Mart as they fought unions<\/a>. Her years as first lady are of some value, but again are hardly sufficient to qualify her to be president. I\u2019ve previously noted reports<\/a> that Clinton did not have national security clearance as first lady. Her major action as first lady was on health care, which didn’t turn out very well. In contrast, Obama was successful <\/a>in his efforts at expanding health care in Illinois. It is also notable that, although she is running on her experience, she is keeping the records from her years as first lady secret<\/a>\u00a0until after the election.<\/p>\n

If we are to count every year since graduation from law school, Clinton does have more years with some experience. What is more important is the type of experience and what was done with it. While Clinton\u2019s experience was frequently based upon seeking government solutions to problems, Obama was involved as a community organizer. This might partially explain why Clinton concentrates on imposing government solutions for problems while Obama also considers ways in which people can help themselves.<\/p>\n

While Clinton was practicing corporate law, Obama was teaching Constitutional law. This has had an impact in his strong support for separation of church and state<\/a> and the differences in their views on presidential power and executive privilege<\/a> as Clinton supports decreased transparency and would be more likely to continue, and I fear abuse, the powers taken by George Bush.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noted Obama\u2019s legislative record <\/a>in another post this morning. In contrast, Clinton has supported the Iraq war, voted for Kyl-Lieberman, opposed needle exchange programs<\/a>, favored strict sentences for drug use (while Obama has favored retroactive changes), supported legislation to ban flag burning<\/a>, supported censorship of video games<\/a>, and opposed the banning of cluster bombs<\/a>. These are just some of the areas where I feel Clinton was wrong and Obama was right. Clinton\u2019s experience certainly does not mean having better judgment on the issues.<\/p>\n

Cross posted from Liberal Values<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest post by Ron Chusid One reason that Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign has been unsuccessful is that she has failed to provide a compelling reason for many of us to vote for her. Initially Clinton\u2019s campaign was based upon her being the inevitable winner, but that collapsed when she lost the Iowa caucus. She also claims […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}