Clinton quizzed on Iraq in New Hampshire visit

BERLIN, N.H. – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., faced tough questions over her 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq during a town hall gathering Saturday in this small mill city tucked away in the far northeastern reaches of the state.

The response to Clinton’s visit to New Hampshire, her first since 1996, was typified by Roger Tilton.

Tilton, a financial consultant from Nashua who had risen at 4 a.m. to make the drive north, asked Clinton to apologize for her vote. She refused – repeating her stance that, “I have taken responsibility for my vote.”

Tilton was unmoved. “Until she says it was a mistake she won’t get my vote,” he insisted.

The exchange highlighted the challenge Clinton faces in her still-new candidacy for president. She must convince Democratic primary voters, who tend to be strongly opposed to the war in Iraq, that her pragmatic approach to ending the conflict is the right one. Complicating that task is the fact that her two main rivals for the Democratic nomination – Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina – have spoken out stridently against the war.

Despite the pointed questioning on Iraq, Clinton remained the poised front-runner that both state and national polls make her out to be. She deftly answered questions on the rising cost of college tuition, immigration and the situation in Darfur. On health care reform, which Clinton failed to tackle successfully as first lady, she was unbowed about the need to expand coverage.

“I am going to be right back up on that horse of universal health care coverage, and we are going to ride,” she promised.

Hundreds packed into the Berlin City Hall on a frigid morning for the chance to see and hear her; thousands more lined the wooden bleachers at Concord High School in the state capital later in the day.

For many it was their first in-person exposure to Clinton, and there was considerable curiosity about how she would handle the back-and-forth repartee on which New Hampshire voters pride themselves.

“I’d like to like her,” said Nathaniel Gurien, of North Conway. “Now that she is running, she has to show us what she’s made of.”

Much of Clinton’s rhetoric was aimed at casting herself as an ordinary woman who had lived an extraordinary life. She described her upbringing in a “middle-class family in the middle of America in the middle of last century” and asked the audience to help her avoid gaining weight while in the state and stopping too often at Dunkin’ Donuts.

On issues, she was vague – choosing to focus on her accomplishments during her first six years in the Senate rather than on specific proposals. Asked what she would do to reform the health care system, Clinton was careful not to lay out a plan and instead turned the question back on the audience. On energy independence, Clinton advocated several small-bore measures but offered no broad proposal.

But it was Iraq and Clinton’s positioning on the issue that served as the focal point of the day. Even those who were obvious supporters pressed for assurances that she believed the war was a mistake. One woman, who prefaced her remarks by telling Clinton, “You go, girl,” asked her to better explain the 2002 vote.

Clinton said her vote did not give President Bush the authority to conduct a “pre-emptive war” and cited comments she made to that effect at the time.

“He should not have been trusted with the authority we gave him,” she said. Clinton noted she has advocated capping the number of troops in Iraq at the January 2007 levels and supports measures to cut off funding to Iraqi security forces if progress is not made in limiting the violence there.

Clinton refused to accept the premise that the Senate’s effort to pass a nonbinding resolution condemning the president’s plan to send more American troops to Iraq was a meaningless exercise.

“We are working to change the president’s policy,” she said. “Getting change in our system is difficult. I’m still in the arena. I’m still fighting.”

Not everyone was convinced.

“She’s very politically calculating and careful,” said Chuck Henderson, of North Conway. “I want someone who has courage and is fearless.”