Brookhaven Courier

Issue date: 9/10/07 Section: Politics

With the presidential election still nearly a year away and in the midst of a tumultuous primary season, Hillary Clinton has advanced her role as the front-runner in the race for the presidency in 2008 by mimicking her strength in national polls with an equally strong showing in Iowa.

Among Iowa voters, who are the first in the nation to vote during primary season, she leads the Democratic polls with 30 percent of respondents saying they support her campaign. Her nearest competitors are John Edwards with 23 percent and Barack Obama with 19 percent according to Zogby International.

A series of debates and speeches she gave since her arrival in the state have outlined her views on foreign policy, the Iraq war, health care and a myriad of other issues important to voters.

Clinton has consistently justified her "in it to win it" campaign slogan in these debates by using very strong language criticizing the actions of both the Bush administration and other candidates, particularly Obama.

To explain her comments calling Obama na've for saying he would open talks with Iran, Syria and North Korea, she said, "When you've got that big an agenda, you should not telegraph to our adversaries that you're willing to meet with them without preconditions."

The squabbling between Obama and Clinton has pushed forward an image of Obama who is inexperienced but represents change and conversely an image of Clinton as experienced but deeply entrenched in the mechanisms of the current system in Washington.

New York Times polling indicates that not only do most men and women believe Clinton is not only fit to be commander in chief, but that she is most likely to win the presidency.

Her highest seat in the Senate was on the Armed Services Panel, and although she voted to go to war in Iraq in 2003 with most of the other senators, she believes in a phased withdrawal of troops with no specific timetable for completion.

She also joined all other major Democratic candidates in calling for the removal of Shiite Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from power for his inability to forge cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites in the government.

Furthermore, despite voting to go to the war from which she is calling for a withdrawal, she has still not publicly called her decision a mistake, blaming it instead on faulty intelligence provided by the Bush administration.

Perhaps the most important factor in both her popularity and her success is her husband's two terms as president, lasting from 1992-2000.

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