The question was typical for a New Hampshire political event: specific, informed, a little obscure.
The man asked New York Sen. Hillary Clinton about Bolivia. “My tax dollars have gone to attack and destabilize democracy in Bolivia, and it sickens me.” He wanted to know whether Clinton would end American “cowboy diplomacy.”
“Well, to start with, I can only be a cowgirl,” she quipped.
Here was Clinton at her best, so deeply knowledgeable about issues, so fluid off the cuff, that there was nothing anyone could ask her that would cause her to stumble.
In recent days she’s been playing to this strength in New Hampshire, taking questions for nearly two hours, and Nevadans can expect plenty of opportunity to confront her when she arrives here.
After her one-liner about cowgirls, Clinton continued with a disquisition on American foreign policy in Latin America, Bolivian left-wing populist Evo Morales and a framework for better relations for the sake of trade and stopping illegal immigration.
Of course, she’s been to Bolivia as well.
That’s just one example. There have been questions about immigration, the Alternative Minimum Tax, health care and the Iraq war.
Each time, Clinton knows the issue, explains it clearly and often touts her experience on it: She served on the board of a hospital in Arkansas, was an attorney on the Watergate Committee and the Children’s Defense Fund, went to Northern Ireland to help advance the peace process, helped design the children’s health insurance program, brought better health care to veterans and has served on the Armed Services Committee.
For a voter like Sheila Murray, a retired educator, there’s no question who should be president.
“She doesn’t beat around the bush. She’ll attack these issues. She knows them, and she’s a problem solver,” she said.
Then this: “It’s more than air.”
That was an implicit barb at Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who’s rocketed ahead of Clinton in the polls in New Hampshire and has drawn even nationally.
In that one line, Murray recognized Clinton’s problem, which was summed up this way by the writer David Corn: “He’s selling vision, she’s selling vegetables.”
Obama is barnstorming across New Hampshire, leaving huge crowds aglow with his message of hope and deliverance from the forces of status quo Washington.
The Clinton team has realized the Obama message is resonating, just as it did in Iowa, where the first-term Illinois senator won a commanding victory last week.
So Clinton has begun a line of attack that, if allowed to germinate, could derail the Obama freight train.
The argument goes like this: So he gives a good speech. So what?
“Issue after issue there is this gulf between talk and action, between rhetoric and reality,” Clinton said in Salem, as she has at stops across New Hampshire this weekend.
Clinton criticizes Obama’s thin Senate record, ridiculing the ethics legislation he cites as a signature achievement.
Experience, a record of solving problems that’s what prepares a person for the presidency, she says.
In Salem, she asked this rhetorical question, framing the challenges ahead and implicitly questioning Obama’s preparation for meeting them: “Who on Day One will be able to walk into the Oval Office, confront all of the problems stacked on that desk, from a war to end in Iraq to a war to resolve in Afghanistan to an economy possibly sliding into recession, to all the millions of heartbreaking stories about people without the health care they need, to our energy crisis, to global warming, which is a real and terrible threat to our planet? Then there are the problems nobody can predict, and the president of the United States has to decide how to handle them.”
For some, it’s a persuasive warning not to make the wrong choice in today’s New Hampshire primary.
But it’s also a joyless recitation of American malaise, and not something that energizes a crowd.
Clinton over the weekend said the candidates mustn’t give Americans “false hopes.” Obama seized on it as a disqualifying sign of cynicism and a denial of the role of hope in American progress, from civil rights to putting a man on the moon.
At an earlier event in Dover, Sheila Pike of Wolfboro came in as an undecided voter. She left as Clinton was still taking questions, unpersuaded. She was on her way to an Obama event and had this to say about Clinton: “She seemed kinda flat.”
In fairness to Clinton, the campaign has become a grueling marathon, enough to beat anyone down.
Earlier in the day, she was asked how she soldiers on every day, and she became emotional before replying, “It’s not easy. It’s not easy.”
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy