Clinton takes on rivals, Rove in debate
DES MOINES -- The strengths and vulnerabilities of two leading Democratic presidential candidates were spotlighted in a debate Sunday as Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her electability and Barack Obama said he is ready to be president.
The 90-minute session at Drake University marked the first Democratic debate in the state that will kick off the nominating process in January. And the race here could not be tighter. The latest ABC News poll has Obama at 27%, Clinton at 26% and former North Carolina senator John Edwards at 26%.
As the Democrats debated on a special edition of ABC's This Week, departing White House strategist Karl Rove was on Sunday morning talk shows elaborating on his description of Clinton last week as a "fatally flawed" candidate.
"She enters the primary season with the highest negatives of any front-runner since the history of polling began," Rove said on CBS' Face the Nation. That will be hard to change, he added.
"I find it interesting he's so obsessed with me," Clinton said when debate host George Stephanopoulos brought up Rove's comments. She said high negatives — she had a 49% unfavorable rating in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll this month — are inevitable for the eventual Democratic nominee.
"The idea that you're going to escape the Republican attack machine and not have high negatives by the time they're through with you, I think, is just missing what's been going on in American politics for the last 20 years," the New York senator said.
Obama said the Democrat who wins the nomination will win the election. But he implied Clinton is part of the problems and attitudes that "pre-date the Bush administration" — including conventional thinking, backbiting, special interest influence and divisive politics.
"We're going to need somebody who can break out of the political patterns that we've been in over the last 20 years," Obama said. "I'm your guy."
Edwards said if Democrats "become the party of status quo in 2008, that's a loser." He said lobbyists "stand between us and the change America needs," and his legal experience taking on corporations makes him "the candidate who can bring change."
Clinton could signal she is not a "Washington insider" by refusing money from lobbyists, Edwards said. Although she has not agreed to do so, Clinton said Sunday that she has taken on special interests "on so many different fronts." The way to fix the problem is to have publicly financed elections, she said.
Obama, the Illinois senator, was also in the hot seat. Stephanopoulos quoted Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as saying that "right now I don't believe (Obama) is" ready to be president and asked others if they agreed.
Clinton said that "you should not telegraph to our adversaries that you're willing to meet with them without preconditions during the first year in office," referring to a stand Obama took in an earlier debate. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said it was "dangerous" for the freshman senator to have said he would go into Pakistan and take out terrorists if Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf would not.
"To prepare for this debate, I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair," Obama said in response, winning a big laugh. Contesting the idea that he's not ready to be president, he said: "Nobody had more experience than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and many of the people on this stage that authorized this war" in Iraq.
Addressing each other directly on Iraq, the candidates debated how long it would take to withdraw U.S. troops, how many residual troops, if any, to leave there, and their views on Biden's plan to give Iraq's ethnic and religious groups "breathing room" by dividing the country into three sections.
Obama said all the Democrats would end the war and all agree the options are "messy."
"The thing I wish had happened was that all the people on this stage had asked these questions before they authorized us getting in," he said.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Alaska senator Mike Gravel also took part. Richardson, a former House member, Energy secretary and United Nations ambassador who is Hispanic, offered himself as an alternative to those torn between Clinton's experience and Obama's promise of change: "With me you get both."