Sep 29, 2007 6:22 pm US/Eastern
Obama Seeks Support Quoting Bill Clinton
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Saturday his
public service experience trumps that of rival Hillary Rodham
Clinton's, and he tried to use her husband's words to make his point.
Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said his background as a
community organizer, lawyer, professor and state senator is more
valuable than Hillary Clinton's experience "working the system" as
first lady and in other roles.
In doing so, Obama tried to throw former President Clinton's words
back at him, quoting comments Bill Clinton made in a 1992 debate with
the first President Bush.
"The same old experience is not relevant. ... And you can have the
right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience," Clinton
said at the time.
"He's exactly right," Obama said at a rally. "What we need to do is put an end to the wrong kind of experience."
Obama cited his success in helping to enact campaign finance reform
as an Illinois legislator and an ethics overhaul while in the U.S.
Senate. He said the nation does not need "the kind of experience that
tinkers around the edges instead of doing something fundamental about
how lobbyists operate in Washington."
"We need the kind of experience that I think I bring to this race, of bringing people together to get things done," he said.
In a recent television interview, Bill Clinton was asked to compare
questions about Obama's experience with similar questions he faced when
he ran for the White House in 1992.
Clinton noted that he was governor of Arkansas at the time, when the
major issue of the day was not a foreign war but restoring the economy.
He said he was closer to Obama in experience in 1988, when he decided
not to enter the presidential race.
"And I really didn't think I knew enough, and had served enough and
done enough to run," he told Bloomberg Television. "That doesn't mean
that he shouldn't. That's his decision."
