Hillary’s claim to be the solution-person won’t work either for
the same simple reason: She hasn’t passed any. If she were McCain, she
could tout a long history of legislative success on key issues and
herald her ability to pass bills and engineer progress. But she hasn’t
done that. She hasn’t walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.
As a first lady, Hillary’s sole important legislative involvement
came during the first two years of her husband’s presidency when she
sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an effort that
failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of
Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997,
she was largely absent from the White House, traveling the world,
promoting her best selling book and helping to raise funds. She never
attended strategy meetings and her only intervention in the singular
legislative achievements of Bill’s administration — welfare reform
and the balanced budget deal — was privately to urge a veto of the
former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut in the
capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to
oversee the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt,
but the Clinton administration essentially folded its legislative
efforts during those years and hung on for dear life. No portfolio of
accomplishments there.
In the Senate, she has largely spent her time raising funds for
herself and other Democrats (in hopes of attracting the votes of super
delegates) and promoting her best selling memoir Living History. In part
because of a lack of attention and also because of the Democrats’
minority status during much of her Senate tenure, she has passed very,
very little of note.
Her legislative accomplishments in her first term in the Senate were
almost entirely symbolic. She renamed a courthouse after Justice
Thurgood Marshall. She passed a resolution honoring Alexander Hamilton
and another celebrating the win of a Syracuse University lacrosse team.
She renamed post offices, founded a national park in Puerto Rico and
expressed the sense of the Senate that Harriet Tubman should have gotten
a federal pension 150 years ago.
Her only actual legislation included one bill to increase nurse
recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimer’s care givers
and another to expand veterans’ health benefits, a paltry output for
six years’ service.
In her second term, she has spent full-time campaigning for president
and has the worst attendance record of the three senators now still in
the presidential race.
HILLARY
CLINTON GOOFS AGAIN! by Dick Morris
Clinton said it's her 35 years of experience that make her the best
candidate to take on presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain in
November.
After losing primaries in Ohio and Texas, Sen. Barack Obama argued the
media has not held Clinton's feet to the fire on foreign policy.
A
fact check on Clinton's foreign policy
claims
But former Democratic Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who was a
U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland, told CNN that while Clinton
was not directly involved in negotiations, she did play a helpful role in
bringing in women's groups that made a difference.
Mitchell is a Democratic super-delegate and has not publicly endorsed
Clinton or Obama.
Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, was also involved in the
process. He recalls one late-night meeting with former President Bill
Clinton, Sen. Clinton and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
"There was a discussion of how the IRA would decommission its
weapons. And I know that Sen. Clinton was part of that meeting," King
said.
Kosovo
"I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety
from Kosovo," she said on CNN's American Morning.
In May of 1999, she was in Macedonia visiting refugee camps near the
Kosovo border and meeting with Macedonia's president and prime minister.
Sources with knowledge of her visit say she discussed the refugees'
plight with those leaders. It's not clear how much she helped since CNN
reported at the time that Macedonia reopened its border to Kosovar
refugees before Clinton's visit.
China
"I've been standing up against, you know, the Chinese government
over women's rights and standing up for human rights in many different
places," she said on CNN's American Morning.
During a 1995 visit to Beijing, at a time when her husband's
administration was trying to press China on human rights, Sen. Clinton
made a speech condemning abuses.
"No one should be forced to remain silent for fear of religious or
political persecution, arrest, abuse or torture," she said.
But a former National Security Council official in the Clinton
administration says Clinton didn't attend NSC meetings. So while her
experience is extensive, she rarely carried an official portfolio.
CNN
FactCheck, Mar. 6, 2008
Hillary's
Adventures Abroad
On March 6 Hillary Clinton claimed that, unlike Barack
Obama, she and likely Republican nominee John McCain have "cross[ed]
the commander-in-chief threshold." In a CNN interview the day
before, Clinton had listed five foreign policy accomplishments. We can't
determine how much behind-the-scenes work Clinton did while first lady,
and she certainly took an active interest in foreign policy when her
husband was president. Moreover, her time as first lady plus her longer
Senate career do give Clinton more foreign policy experience than Obama.
But the public record of her actions shows that many of Clinton's
foreign policy claims are exaggerated.
- Clinton claims to have "negotiated open
borders" in Macedonia to fleeing Kosovar refugees. But the
Macedonian border opened a full day before she arrived, and her
meetings with Macedonian officials were too brief to allow for much
serious negotiating.
- Clinton's activities "helped bring peace to
Northern Ireland." Irish officials are divided as to how
helpful Clinton's actions were, and key players agree that she was
not directly involved in any actual negotiations.
- Clinton has repeatedly referenced her
"dangerous" trip to Bosnia. She fails to mention, however,
that the Bosnian war had officially ended three months before her
visit – or that she made the trip with her 16-year-old daughter
and two entertainers.
- Both Bill and Hillary Clinton claim that Hillary
privately championed the use of U.S. troops to stop the genocide in
Rwanda. That conversation left no public record, however, as U.S.
policy was explicitly to stay out of Rwanda, and officials say that
the use of U.S. troops was never considered.
- Clinton's tough speech on human rights delivered to
a Beijing audience is as advertised, though Clinton herself has been
dismissive of speeches that aren't backed by solutions.
Over the past two weeks – beginning with that
well-known 3 a.m. ad
where she calls herself "tested" – Hillary Clinton has been
arguing that she has significantly more foreign policy experience than
Barack Obama, her rival for the Democratic nomination. On her Web site,
Clinton cites
five specific examples of her foreign policy experience: her assistance in
bringing peace to Northern Ireland; her work to help open Macedonia’s
borders to Albanian refugees; her trip to the Bosnian war zone to promote
U.S. policy; her speech on women’s rights delivered in Beijing; and her
public statements on Rwanda. Obama's camp has fired
right back with charges that Clinton is exaggerating her foreign
policy experience. And when initially pressed to name a "moment"
when Clinton was "tested in crisis" her two chief spokespeople
responded with an awkward
silence.
Officials from Bill Clinton’s administration are largely divided as to
the extent and effectiveness of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy role as
first lady. For example, Richard Holbrooke, a former assistant secretary
of state and ambassador to the U.N., claims that Clinton’s "intense
efforts" in Macedonia "contributed to saving many lives."
On the other hand, Susan Rice, also an assistant secretary of state during
the Clinton administration, argues that Clinton was never asked to do any
"heavy lifting" and says that Clinton’s role was more about
"gentle prodding or constructive reinforcement." That Holbrooke
and Rice would remember Clinton’s role differently is unsurprising:
Holbrooke is a foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign, while Rice
has the same role with Obama’s campaign.
Indeed, the New York Times recently reported that, as first lady,
Clinton did not hold a security clearance nor did she sit in on meetings
with the National Security Council. We examined some of the specific
examples of Sen. Clinton’s experience and found that most of them are
weaker than advertised.
Hillary's
Adventures Abroad, FactCheck.org, Mar. 13, 2008
