Clinton ‘eager’ to defend State record

Hillary Clinton’s Iran speech on Wednesday isn’t a one-time event timed for votes this week on Capitol Hill, the Democratic presidential candidate’s senior aides say.

The speech, in which she outlined a five-point plan on Iran, is part of a larger strategy to use the deal — and the upcoming vote — as a window for telling her story of her four-year tenure as Secretary of State.

{mosads}It’s a record that Republican candidates are already targeting. 

They say Clinton’s time at Foggy Bottom was a failure, and have hammered the results of her “reset” with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, the deaths of four Americans in the terrorist attack on Benghazi, and ongoing violence in the Middle East.

But Clinton is “eager” to have the debate, according to Jake Sullivan, a foreign policy adviser on the Clinton campaign who worked for her as a senior aide at the State Department.  

“Every time she mixes it up with Republicans on these issues, she supplies further evidence of why she stands to prevail in that debate,” he said in an email to The Hill on Wednesday.   

In her speech at the Brookings Institution, Clinton offered support for the Iran deal but also talked about how she would take a tough line with Tehran in a new Clinton administration. 

Her message leaned heavily on her tenure at State, and she highlighted how she was a key player for Obama in the negotiations. 

“President Obama and I pursued a two-prong strategy” of engagement and pressure, to “significantly raise the cost of Iranian defiance,” she said in the speech. “Meanwhile I traveled the world … twisting arms to help build the global coalition.”

It was a message that also tied her more closely to Obama, who remains popular with Democrats. 

Clinton also offered comments about how she would offer strenuous military support to Israel, where the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has loudly criticized the deal. This offered Clinton a chance to stand apart from Obama. 

The effort to focus on her tenure at State is part of a larger strategy meant to reset Clinton’s campaign. Clinton is seeking to reintroduce herself to voters through appearances on daytime and late-night television programs, where she is showing off more of her personality. 

Republicans argue that Clinton’s approach is an attempt to pivot from stories about her use of a private email server, a narrative that has forced Clinton to issue apologies and sucked oxygen from her campaign. 

The Republican National Committee (RNC) put out a press release coining Clinton as “the Secretary of Spin” and saying that she worked “double time to twist the truth on her failed foreign policy record.”

In a separate statement to The Hill, RNC spokesman Michael Short predicted that Clinton “will be as unsuccessful spinning her failed foreign policy record as she has her growing email scandal because the facts are once again not on her side,” he said. “It’s clear she wants to change the subject,” Short added, “… But pivoting to the Iran deal, Libya, and the failed ‘Russia Reset’ is going to be like running into a brick wall.”

Changing the subject isn’t a bad strategy for Clinton, who also hopes her record will contrast favorably with her GOP rivals. 

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said the campaign is playing up Clinton’s foreign policy experience because none of the Republicans Clinton opposes “has the same kind of record.”

“It’s a smart strategy because they’re already taking on the water of Republican attacks so they ought to get the benefits,” said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist. “I think it’s important to focus on the successes. It’s not just about the amount of miles flown but the amount of good that was done so those they have to persuade are aware of it.” 

In a conference call after the speech on Wednesday, Team Clinton, former State Department colleagues, and foreign policy experts aimed to further break down the former secretary of State’s involvement in the deal, discussing her first trip to Moscow in 2009 and how she and her team persuaded the Russians to get “on board” with sanctions against Iran. 

Nicholas Burns, a professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, reinforced the idea that she has “a lot of experience in diplomacy after four years as secretary of State.”

Sullivan said they wanted to convey the contribution Clinton made in the lead-up to the deal and with a “very important vote coming up,” the public deserved to know where presidential candidates stand.

But political observers cautioned that Team Clinton needed to continue to tread carefully. 

“They have been handling this in delicate fashion,” said Zelizer. “It is obviously a pillar to the argument that she has experience on big policy issues and understands how to govern. This sets her apart.

But Zelizer added, “There have been so many scandals tied to this position, and there have been so many controversies over Obama’s foreign policy that the campaign can’t move forward in top speed to promote these years.”