QUESTION: Thanks. One of the things that Senator Obama talks about a lot is judgment
and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the recent criticism of Mark Penn, who is Hillary's chief strategist, who's
been criticized for being somewhat out of touch with reality.
For instance, he circulated a memo
about Iowa, saying "Where's the balance," [sic: bounce] and then the next day, there was a 12-point jump for
Obama.
CLINTON: He was wrong. He was wrong about that, because the
balance [sic] always occurs on the second day, not the first day. It always occurs on the second day, not the first day.
But since you raised the judgment issue, let's go over this again. That
is the central argument for his campaign. "It doesn't matter that I started running for president less than a year
after I got to the Senate from the Illinois state senate. I am a great speaker and a charismatic figure and I am the only
one that had the judgment to oppose this floor [sic: war] from the beginning, always, always, always."
First, it is factually not true that everybody that supported that resolution supported Bush
attacking Iraq before the U.N. inspectors withdrew. Chuck Hagel [NE] was one of the co-authors of that resolution,
the only Republican Senator that always opposed the war, every day, from the get-go.
He authored
the resolution to say that Bush could go to war only if they didn't cooperate with the inspectors and he was assured personally
by [then-national security adviser] Condi Rice, as many of the other Senators were. So, first, the case is wrong that way.
Second, it is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior
judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years and never got asked one time, not once,
"Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You
said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running
on off your Web site in 2004 and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since."
Give me a break.
[applause]
This whole thing
is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen. So you can talk about Mark Penn all you want. What did you
think about the Obama thing, calling Hillary the "Senator from Punjab?" Did you like that? Or what about the Obama
handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook, scouring me, scathing criticism over
my financial reports.
But, you know, the idea that one of these campaigns is positive and other
is negative, when I know the reverse is true and I have seen it and I have been blistered by it for months, is a little tough
to take. Just because of the sanitizing coverage that's in the media doesn't mean the facts
aren't out there.