Front-runner last in specifics
Hillary’s first in platitudes, but caution could doom her
By Ann McFeatters
Saturday, September 29, 2007
WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton is learning the downside of being the front-runner - more Democrats are getting antsy, finding her answers noncommittal, even Republicanesque.
At the seventh Democratic debate, staged at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, the audience response to her “I’m not going to answer that” stance was almost hostile.
The former first lady proved critics wrong when she worked hard to be elected twice to the Senate from New York, where she had never before lived.
Now she seems so confident of getting her party’s presidential nomination that she is already moving to the center of the road to do battle with a Republican opponent, whoever that would be.
Centrism was her husband’s strategy, and it ushered them both into the White House in 1993.
But that was before the war in Iraq. It was before 9/11. It was before President Bush began beating the drums to confront Iran about its nuclear ambitions. It was before Israel attacked Syria. It was before actuaries decided that providing Social Security to 80 million people is impossible without higher taxes or lower benefits. It was before her failed effort to reform health care probably doomed the nation to doing nothing for decades. It was before immigration erupted as a political issue.
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