Clinton and Obama campaigns clash in debate over presidential diplomacy

CHARLESTON, S.C. – The rival camps of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama clashed Tuesday over the meaning of Obama’s claim in a Democratic presidential debate that he’d be willing to meet with leaders of rogue nations such as Cuba, North Korea and Iran.\nClinton supporters characterized it as a gaffe that underscored the freshman senator’s lack of foreign-policy savvy while Obama’s team claimed his response displayed judgment and a repudiation of President Bush’s diplomacy.\n“I would think that without having done the diplomatic spadework, it would not really prove anything,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in a conference call with reporters set up by the Clinton campaign.\nIn a memo from Obama spokesman Bill Burton, the campaign contended that Obama’s comments played well with focus groups that watched the debate and “showed his willingness to lead and ask tough questions on matters \nof war.”\nObama “offered a dramatic change from the Bush administration’s eight-year refusal to protect our security interests by using every tool of American power available, including diplomacy,” said \nthe memo.\nIn Tuesday’s two-hour debate from Charleston, S.C., Obama was asked if he would be willing to meet, without precondition, in the first year of his presidency with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.\n“I would,” he responded.\nClinton said she would not.\n“I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes,” she said. Her campaign quickly posted video of her answer online, trying to show she has a different understanding of foreign policy than her chief rival.\nObama adviser David Axelrod said on Tuesday that Obama would not just meet blindly with such leaders but only after diplomatic spadework had \nbeen accomplished.\nAmericans “are sick of the Bush diplomacy and aren’t interested in continuing it,” said Axelrod.\nThe Obama campaign was quick to point to an April 23 quote from Clinton in which she said, “I think it’s a terrible mistake for our president to say he won’t talk to \nbad people.” \nThat, Obama representatives said, showed Clinton had changed \nher position.\nBut Albright said, “I never would have gotten out of the debate last night that there was any change in position.”\nShe emphasized that Obama had said he would meet with such leaders in his first year without preconditions.\n“If you look back at real breakthroughs and diplomatic history, what you basically find is that in order to understand where the situation is, to clear the underbrush away, it is necessary to have lower level people make the initial contact,” Albright said.\nObama representatives also sought to emphasize anew Clinton’s initial support for the war, echoing comments by the candidate himself who asserted in the debate: “The time to ask how we’re going to get out of Iraq was before we got in.”\nRival John Edwards, who campaigned in South Carolina on Tuesday, echoed Clinton’s comments in the debate.\n“I would not commit myself on the front end openly to meet with (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Il, (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez,” Edwards told reporters in McClellanville, S.C.