by Mike Dorning
Barack Obama said this morning he isn’t impressed with Hillary Clinton’s efforts to portray this week’s presidential debate as a group of male candidates piling on the sole female in the race.
He rather pointedly noted in an interview on NBC’s Today Show this morning that he has not cast other candidates’ criticism of him as white candidates going after the sole black in the race.
Here’s the exchange with Matt Lauer this morning:
MR. LAUER: Let’s start where Andrea left off, this idea that when the guys challenged the gal at this debate this week, that in some ways you were ganging up on her. And you heard what Senator Clinton said at Wellesley yesterday. She said that in some ways that all-women’s college prepared her for the all-boys’ club of presidential politics.
Now, it sounds to me, Senator, as if I just heard the gender card drop. How are you going to deal with it?
SEN. OBAMA: (Laughs.) Well, look, I am assuming and I hope that Senator Clinton wants to be treated like everybody else. And I think that that’s why she’s running for president.
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You know, when we had a debate back in Iowa a while back, we spent, I think, the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues. And I didn’t come out and say, “Look, I’m being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage.” I assumed it was because there were real policy differences there. And I think that has to be the attitude that all of us take. We’re not running for the president of the city council. We’re running for the presidency of the United States of America.
MR. LAUER: So you don’t feel as if you have to be sensitive at all to this gender issue, that if you do vigorously challenge Senator Clinton that it might take on a more perilous tone than if you vigorously challenge a male candidate?
SEN. OBAMA: No, look, I don’t think that people doubt that Senator Clinton is tough. She’s used to playing in national politics. And, in fact, that is one of the things that she has suggested is why she should be elected is because she’s been playing in this rough-and- tumble stage. So it doesn’t make sense for her, after having run that way for eight months, the first time that people start challenging her point of view, that suddenly she backs off and says, “Don’t pick on me.”