Clinton Criticizes Obama’s Foreign Experience

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WASHINGTON — Slipping in the Iowa polls, Senator Clinton is ridiculing a claim by her top rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama, that his experience living abroad as a child would help him improve America’s reputation in the world.

“Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face,” she said in Iowa yesterday. “I think we need a president with more experience than that.”

The jab was a reference to Mr. Obama, who has repeatedly cited his time living in Indonesia as a credential for leading American foreign policy, particularly in dealing with Muslim nations. He did so most recently on Monday, when he said his four years in Southeast Asia was “probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations.”

Mrs. Clinton said yesterday that the country needed “someone the world knows, looks up to, and has confidence in.”

It was the second day in a row that the Democratic front-runner took aim at Mr. Obama’s experience. In an economic speech on Monday in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton warned against electing a president who needed “on-the-job training,” saying it would be the “costliest job training in history.” For most of the first 10 months of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton had shunned attacks on her Democratic rivals, but that has changed quickly in the last week.

The escalating rhetoric comes after the most recent Iowa poll had Mr. Obama leading Mrs. Clinton by four points in the state that casts the first ballots in January. Mrs. Clinton maintains a wide lead in national polls, but a New Hampshire survey released yesterday showed her lead narrowing in that state as well.

The Obama campaign responded swiftly yesterday by linking Mrs. Clinton to two men reviled by most Democrats. “Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld have spent time in the White House and traveled to many countries as well, but along with Hillary Clinton they led us into the worst foreign policy disaster in a generation and are now giving George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran,” a spokesman, Bill Burton, said. “The real choice in this election is between conventional Washington thinking that prizes posture and positioning, or real change that puts judgment and honesty first.”

Mrs. Clinton’s comment about the Illinois senator also drew a response from the campaign of John Edwards, whom she had accused of “mudslinging” in a debate last week. “Now we know what Senator Clinton meant when she talked about ‘throwing mud’ in the last debate,” a spokesman for the former North Carolina senator, Chris Kofinis, said. “Like so many other things, when it comes to mud, Hillary Clinton says one thing and throws another.”

The Democratic infighting came on a day when Mrs. Clinton was facing criticism from both sides of the aisle for her decision to target the “Republican attack machine” in a new television ad in New Hampshire. The 30-spot opens with images of ads from Mitt Romney and Senator McCain of Arizona that criticize Mrs. Clinton by name. A narrator says, “Here they go again. The same old Republican attack machine is back.”

While the ad argues that Republicans are going after Mrs. Clinton because she is the strongest Democratic candidate, her rivals say it underscores her image as a polarizing political figure who relishes partisanship.

A spokesman Mr. Romney said Mrs. Clinton “has shown us time and time again that she is more interested in political posturing than any core principles.”

The campaign of a Democratic opponent, Senator Dodd of Connecticut, called the ad an “admission” from Mrs. Clinton that if she is elected, “we’re headed for four more years of the partisan warfare, Washington dysfunction, bitter divisiveness, and gridlock.”

By contrast, Mr. McCain’s camp said the attention from Mrs. Clinton was more than welcome. “It’s our sincere hope that Senator Clinton will continue to use her massive war chest in TV advertisements featuring John McCain,” a spokeswoman for the financially strapped senator, Jill Hazelbaker, said.


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