Apr 9, 2008 2:15 pm US/Eastern
Clinton: I'm Only Candidate Ready To End War
Democratic Candidate Says McCain Will Continue War, While Obama Has No Plan
ALIQUIPPA, Pa (AP) ―
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday she is the only presidential candidate who will begin a prompt drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, and rival Sen. Barack Obama cast himself as the one best able to turn the nation's economy around.
The two Democrats returned to the campaign trail in Pennsylvania Wednesday, looking toward the state's April 22 primary. In making their claims at separate appearances, Clinton and Obama implicitly suggested that Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, is not up to the task of running the country.
Clinton said McCain is unwilling to withdraw troops, and Obama cannot be trusted to do so. Her comments came one day after the three candidates spent a rare day in the Senate questioning the top U.S. military commander for Iraq.
"One candidate will continue the war," she told an audience at Hopewell High School, near Pittsburgh. "One candidate only says he'll end the war. And one candidate is ready, willing and able to end the war."
Obama, campaigning in the Philadelphia suburbs, issued a broad indictment of Republican economic policies and singled out McCain for special rebuke, saying he is willing to "sit idly by" in the face of a national housing crisis.
"It's time to end the Bush-Cheney-McCain policy that tells the American people 'you're on your own' because we're all in this together," Obama told a crowd assembled at Great Valley High School in Malvern.
But Obama also tweaked Clinton, alluding to her husband's presidency while blaming Democrats for being at times "too timid" to confront Washington special interests.
"We let go of the past, but we never finished that bridge to a future of lasting prosperity," he said, a reference to the slogan President Clinton used as he began his second term of office about building a bridge to the 21st century. "Instead, we lost that common stake in each other's prosperity."
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Obama and Clinton "are selfishly trying to make political gains in the worst way, by dishonestly saying that John McCain is something that he is not. Americans know that John McCain is the only candidate in this race who has a strong record of fighting to keep their paychecks and communities safe."
For her part, Clinton did not say why she believes Obama would not carry out his pledge to bring most U.S. troops home within 16 months. A campaign news release quoted her as saying, "his adviser says you can't count on that."
It was a reference to a former Obama adviser, Samantha Power, who told a Scottish newspaper that Obama might take longer to end the war if conditions are not favorable. His aides have said Power was not speaking for the campaign, which issued a statement Wednesday saying Clinton's "tired and discredited attack is just the same old politics that won't end this war that she voted to authorize."
Clinton hopes for a solid win in Pennsylvania that would sustain her hopes of persuading the party's "superdelegates" to give her the nomination despite Obama's lead in pledged delegates, which are won through primaries and caucuses. Obama has closed in on her lead in recent polls in the state, capitalizing on strong support in Philadelphia and its environs.
Her campaign began running a radio ad in Pennsylvania that criticizes Obama for backing an energy bill that Clinton opposed and challenging his claim to take on the oil companies.
The two Democrats chose the two leading issues of the day — the economy and the war — to distinguish themselves.
Clinton struck two familiar themes Wednesday: She has the experience and steeliness to be commander in chief, and Obama is a talker, not a doer. His plan to end the Iraq war, she said, "is just words."
She called on President Bush to explain his "end game" plan for Iraq. She also said Congress should be allowed "to review and vote on any long-term agreement" that the Bush administration makes with Iraq.
Though Obama did not address the war in Iraq during his remarks on the economy, he did link the war and the economy in response to a question.
"The war in Iraq was unwise," he said. "It has piled a mountain of debt that has weakened our economy."
Asked his reaction to Clinton's recent television commercial that portrayed her as best able to answer a 3 a.m. call on national security, Obama said:
"The person you want answering the phone at 3 a.m. is the person who read the intelligence reports, who is asking the tough questions about why we want to invade a country like Iraq that had nothing to do with 9-11. And there is only one of the remaining candidates who qualifies on that front," he said.
Asked to comment on the Olympics in China, Obama made no mention of Bush's proposed trip for the opening ceremonies, which many human rights activists want him to cancel.
Without offering any specifics, Obama said: "In our policy toward China we have not been consistent enough and tough enough."
But he used the question to once again turn to the economy.
"If we're running huge deficits and big national debts and we're borrowing money constantly from China, that gives us less leverage," he said. "It gives us less leverage to talk about human rights and it also gives us less leverage to talk about the uneven trade relationship we have with China."
Speaking to a group of Irish-Americans in New York City, Clinton commended British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for announcing he will not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics. She called on Obama and McCain to join her in urging Bush to spurn the ceremony as well.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
