Experience — Sen. Clinton says she has 35 years of it

In a concerted effort to deflect attacks on her presidential credentials, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y) and her allies repeatedly say she has 35 years of relevant experience.

{mosads}She has been an elected official only seven years, but the drumbeat of sound bites and statements touting the 35-year figure appears to have paid off.

Even her Democratic rivals prefer to assail her electability rather than her experience.

Polls show that Democratic voters are comfortable with Clinton’s background. A recent Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll of over 600 New Hampshire Democratic primary voters showed that 47 percent believe she has the right experience to be president. Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) were tied for a distant second, with 10 percent each. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) attracted 8 percent.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the GOP front-runner in national polls, panned Clinton’s experience during an interview on Fox News’s “Hannity & Colmes” Tuesday night.

He said, “Honestly, in most respects, I don’t know Hillary’s experience. She’s never run a city, she’s never run a state. She’s never run a business … So I’m trying to figure out where the experience is here.”

Clinton, who will turn 60 next week, has not been timid in laying out the strength of her résumé. In an Oct. 3 release announcing the American Federation of Teachers endorsement of her candidacy, she said, “Throughout my 35 years of working on education, I’ve seen the dedication that American teachers demonstrate day in and day out.”

In September, Clinton issued a release on Hispanic Heritage Month that stated, “Thirty five years ago, I traveled through South Texas, registering Latino voters …”

Describing her healthcare plan, Clinton said that “a family is a child’s first school, and I have a long history going back 35 years as a child advocate …”

Clinton’s proponents have echoed the figure. When Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.) endorsed Clinton late last month, the congresswoman said in a statement, “Her 35-year record fighting for children and families makes her uniquely qualified to hit the ground running.”

{mosimage}Similarly, Nevada State Assemblyman Harry Mortenson lauded Clinton’s 35 years of experience when he backed her last month.

Asked for comment for this article, Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said, “The people who are most important — the voters — think Hillary’s 35 years of advocacy, strength and experience is what counts, which is why one poll after another shows her leading by wide margins on the question of who is most experienced.”

The Clinton campaign suggests that the senator’s experience dates back to before her marriage to Bill Clinton in 1975.

The experience clock for Sen. Clinton, according to her public statements, started in 1972 as a private attorney in Arkansas for Marian Wright Edelman, who subsequently founded the Children’s Defense Fund.

In her 2003 memoir, Living History, Clinton writes that her primary assignment “was to gather information about the Nixon Administration’s failure to enforce the legal ban on granting tax-exempt status to the private segregated academies that had sprung up in the South to avoid integrated public schools.”

Later that year she went to Texas with then-boyfriend Bill Clinton to lead the voter registration drive for George McGovern’s presidential campaign.

Citing experience as a non-elected official can be tricky, according to some analysts. While her campaign has suggested that she played a major role in her husband’s leadership of Arkansas and later of the country, she wasn’t elected to office until 2000.

Few question that Clinton gathered relevant experience when she traveled to 78 countries as first lady.

Theodore Lowi, a senior professor of American Institutions at Cornell University, said the Clintons worked as a team for decades: “They’re a political couple.”

But the senator’s detractors believe that her limited time in elected office is a weakness.

Ross K. Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University, said, “The résumés of every presidential candidate are always padded. I think that most of [Clinton’s claims on experience] are not outrageously inaccurate.”

He added that Clinton’s message is “that you’re not getting someone who needs on-the-job training.”

Clinton, meanwhile, has attempted to seize on Obama’s lack of Washington experience, calling him naïve on foreign policy matters this summer.

Obama has countered that Clinton could not change Washington because of her fierce battles with Republicans in the 1990s.

During an appearance in New Hampshire in late September, Obama said, “So whenever I hear about this issue of experience, I always think about something that was said years ago by a candidate running for president.

“He said, ‘The same old experience is not relevant. You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience.’ Well, that candidate was Bill Clinton. And I think he was absolutely right. I don’t think the same old Washington experience is relevant today, and I do believe I have the right experience for the moment.”

Edwards, who served one term in the Senate, has also been hamstrung by his inability to go after Clinton’s experience. Instead, he questions Clinton’s electability.

Richardson, who has been a U.N. ambassador, secretary of energy, congressman and governor, has also shied away from directly criticizing Clinton’s experience.

Asked whether she has enough experience to be president, Richardson spokesman Tom Reynolds said, “We’re really focused on what our message will be …” He added, however, that Richardson has the most experience of any Democrat in the race.”

Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who have each served in Congress for more than 30 years, suggest Clinton is too polarizing.