WASHINGTON – Swinging back at GOP efforts to paint Democrats as weak on security, Senator Clinton is touting her hawkish credentials in what analysts described as an attempt to distance herself from the party’s anti-war wing in advance of her Senate and White House bids.

Weeks after President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, told the Republican National Committee that national security will be a key component of GOP congressional campaigns this year, Mrs. Clinton yesterday dismissed Mr. Rove’s strategy as Republican fear mongering. She also shielded herself from possible attacks on her defense record, proclaiming: “I take a backseat to nobody when it comes to fighting terrorism and standing up for national and homeland security. I represent New York. I take very seriously that there are people right now in the world, and probably in our own country, not just wishing us harm but actively planning and plotting to deliver it,” the senator said. She recently condemned Mr. Bush’s implementation of an NSA phone surveillance program designed to intercept Al Qaeda communications.

New York’s junior senator told members of the United Auto Workers labor union that Democrats lost the last two election cycles over national security, and that the Republicans “are doing it to us again.”

Political analysts yesterday said that Mrs. Clinton’s direct rebuttal of Mr. Rove was part of an escalating effort to distance her own political fortunes from the anti-war Democratic leadership, which has grown increasingly critical of Mr. Bush’s prosecution of the war on terror.

“The Clintons are very smart politically,” a political analyst and editor of the Web site RealClearPolitics.com, John McIntyre, said. “They recognize the Pelosi-Dean position is a loser,” he added, referring to the House minority leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, of California and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a former Vermont governor, Howard Dean.

The director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, said Mrs. Clinton also could be providing cover for congressional Democrats seeking election from right leaning states supportive of the president’s defense policies. While Ms. Pelosi, Dr. Dean, and the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, of Nevada, have excoriated Mr. Bush for security measures ranging from the alleged “torture” of detained terrorists to the wiretapping program, having a visible, de facto party leader like Mrs. Clinton proclaiming Democratic toughness on security “sets a useful precedent” for pro-war Democrats, Mr. Sabato said.

Mr. McIntyre cautioned that Mrs. Clinton’s efforts, however, would meet with mixed results, because Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats have painted themselves into a corner through their criticism of Mr. Bush. Yesterday, Mrs. Clinton told the UAW that in defending America after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, “We could have done a better job than we have done,” she added: “You cannot explain to me why we have not captured or killed the tallest man in Afghanistan,” referring to Al Qaeda’s leader at large, Osama bin Laden.

Democrats, including Mrs. Clinton, “can’t preen about the outrage of the NSA wiretapping program, and torture, and acting unilaterally, and then try to act like they’re going to be tougher in catching Osama bin Laden, because it’s not credible,” Mr. McIntyre said.

Mrs. Clinton’s Republican opponent in her Senate re-election campaign, John Spencer, lambasted her for “taking a shot at our military for the decisions they’ve made.” He said: “It’s hard to take from a woman whose husband, if he had done his job and not been so unfocused as president, we wouldn’t have had a September 11,” referring to multiple unanswered Al Qaeda attacks and a forgone opportunity to detain Mr. bin Laden, during the Clinton years.

During her speech before the UAW, Mrs. Clinton also addressed the American economy, pledging her support for organized labor and asserting that manufacturing is the “heart and soul of any economy.” In lines that drew applause from her audience, Mrs. Clinton proposed that the federal government help bail American auto manufacturers out of their contractual obligations to provide thousands of employees with pension and health care benefits.

Saying that the current government “wants to undo the work of the 20th century,” the former first lady also recalled that when she arrived in Washington as a senator in 2001, “I quickly realized that the new administration in town wanted to undo everything my husband had done as president – and I admit, I took it kind of personal.”

Mrs. Clinton’s speech followed impassioned remarks by Bernard Sanders, a Vermont congressman seeking to replace the state’s outgoing Senator Jeffords, an Independent, this November. Mr. Sanders, a Socialist, described the current regime in Washington as driven by “greed, greed, greed.”

Mrs. Clinton yesterday threw her weight behind the Socialist’s bid to become her Senate colleague, praising Mr. Sanders as a “good friend,” and asking the audience: “Won’t he be a great addition to the United States Senate? We need to make sure Bernie is elected.”