Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as she campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Sept. 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Quad-City Times, Jeff Cook)
by Mike Dorning
LITTLETON, N.H.—Barack Obama has often questioned Hillary Clinton’s use of her husband’s presidency to assert to policy experience.
So he was ready this morning when a reporter asked him about comments that Clinton made in Iowa a day earlier offering her trips abroad as first lady as evidence of her foreign policy qualifications and asserting she was “the face of America” abroad during the Clinton presidency.
Clinton was echoing a comment her most prominent Iowa supporter, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, made a few days earlier that she was ” the face of the administration in foreign affairs” during the Clinton years.
Well, Obama wasn’t buying either line.
“If she wants to tout her experience of having visited countries, that’s fine,” Obama said. But, he added, “I don’t think that Madeleine Albright would think Hillary Clinton was the face of foreign policy during the Clinton Administration. But maybe she’ll disagree with that.”
Albright, United Nations Ambassador and then Secretary of State for the Clinton Administration, is supporting Hillary Clinton’s bid as a foreign policy adviser.
Later in the day, Albright released a statement through the Clinton campaign saying the former first lady “had represented American interests and values during her visits to more than 80 countries” and would “be ready from the very first day to lead our nation in a dangerous and complicated world, which is why I am supporting her candidacy.”