In Debate, Democrats Show More Unity Than Strife
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JEFF ZELENY
nytimes.com
( For all those who missed it, like I did. )
ORANGEBURG, S.C., April 26 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was professorial and emphatic as she spoke Thursday night about health care, Iraq and whether Wal-Mart was good for America (a “mixed blessing,” she decided) .
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, by reputation a dynamic performer, was reserved and cautious as he talked about a donor with a shady past, how he would respond to a terrorist attack on American shores and his biggest mistake (not doing more to stop Congress from intervening in the Terri Schiavo case, he said).
The setting was the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, a surprisingly sedate and meandering affair, filled with as many moments of awkward humor as memorable insight into the qualifications of the candidates or the policy differences among them.
Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, the junior senator from New York, the two most closely watched candidates of the night, did not tangle at all. They were as likely to address each other politely by first name as to discuss differences between them.
It fell to their rivals to take cuts at them, and even those were modest. John Edwards, the former vice presidential candidate, said Mrs. Clinton’s handling of her vote in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war was between her and her conscience, and he obliquely suggested that Mr. Obama had not offered much substance when it came to one of the most pressing domestic issues, health care.
“Highfalutin language is not enough,” Mr. Edwards said.
The debate, at South Carolina State University, was shown on MSNBC and moderated by the NBC news anchor Brian Williams, who at times appeared to struggle with the unwieldy field of eight candidates whose remarks were packed into a 90-minute event; at several points he resorted to asking for a show of hands to try to spotlight similarities or differences among them. (None went up when Mr. Williams asked if any of the others on stage supported the call by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio to begin impeachment proceedings against Dick Cheney, the vice president).
At another point, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, one of the most verbose senators, delivered a one-word answer that drew laughter from the audience, when Mr. Williams asked whether he had the discipline to lead the free world.
“Yes,” he said. The audience laughed at his brevity. Mr. Biden, looking proud of himself, said nothing else, as Mr. Williams silently if slightly uncomfortably waited for him to expand on his remarks.
Indeed, on this listless stage, it fell to Mr. Kucinich and his equally long-shot rival in the race, Mike Gravel, a former senator from Alaska, to stir the drink. Mr. Gravel at one point loudly belittled the four senators on stage who had earlier in the day voted in Washington for a bill that would set timetables for bringing troops home from Iraq, but that would continue financing their efforts.
What should be done instead? “A law making it a felony to stay there,” Mr. Gravel thundered, as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama stared quizzically at the unfamiliar man sharing the stage with them.
Mr. Kucinich was just as confrontational — if not quite as radical — in his suggestion.
“My good friends here from the Senate just came back from Washington, D.C., where they voted to continue funding the war,” he said. “The Democrats have the power to end the war right now, and that’s what we should do.”
By the end of the night, none of the eight appeared to have distinguished themselves in any appreciable way with the kind of statement or dramatic moment that they might have hoped for; that said, none appeared to have made any campaign-altering mistakes either.
There were as many moments of agreement as disagreement during the night.
All were critical of Mr. Bush for saying he will veto the bill passed by the Senate. All were critical of the Supreme Court for its decision to uphold a law banning a form of late-term abortion. Several nodded when Mr. Biden warned that the decision was a Trojan Horse, as he put it, laying the intellectual groundwork for the court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision on abortion.
And there was some jockeying — albeit not particularly energetic jockeying — among them over the war. Mr. Edwards noted pointedly how he has said his vote for the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq in 2002 was a mistake; Mrs. Clinton has yet to say that.
“Senator Clinton and anyone else who voted for this war has to search themselves and decide whether they believe they’ve voted the right way; if so, they can support their vote,” Mr. Edwards said. “If they believe they didn’t, I think it’s important to be straightforward and honest.”
Mrs. Clinton was quick and studied with her response: “It was a sincere vote based on the information available to me. And I’ve said many times that if I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way.”
Mr. Obama, whose upstart candidacy has unexpectedly jolted the Democratic field, seemed subdued throughout. When asked how he would respond to a major terrorist attack on an American city, Mr. Obama’s answer did not include how he would go after the terrorists. A few moments later, he sought to clarify.
“One thing that I do have to go back on, on this issue of terrorism,” Mr. Obama said. “We have genuine enemies out there that have to be hunted down.”
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut also took part in the debate.
Asked what she would do about a terror attack, Mrs. Clinton said “a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate.”
If the instigator is clear, she said, the military should quickly respond.
Asked whether she thought the federal government failed the students who were killed in the massacre this month at Virginia Tech, Mrs. Clinton replied: “Yes.”
She invoked her husband and the visit she made with the former president to Columbine High School in Colorado after the massacre there in 1999.
“I remember very well when I accompanied Bill to Columbine after that massacre and met with the family members of those who had been killed and talked with the students, and feeling that we had to do more to try to keep guns out of the hands of the criminal and of the mentally unstable,” she said. “And during the Clinton administration, that was a goal, not to in any way violate people’s Second Amendment right but to try to limit access to people who should not have guns.”
“We now know that the background check system didn’t work, because certainly this shooter, as he’s called, had been involuntarily committed as a threat to himself and others,” she said, “and yet he could walk in and buy a gun.”
Mrs. Clinton was one of three senators who did not raise their hands when asked if they had, as an adult, had a gun in their home; the others were Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards.
Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, introduced as the preferred candidate of the National Rifle Association, defended his support of gun rights. Asked whether he had rethought his position after the Virginia Tech massacre, he said he would work to pass laws so that “those with mental illnesses cannot get a gun.”
Former Governor Joins G.O.P. Race
DES MOINES, April 26 (AP) — Jim Gilmore, a former governor of Virginia, entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday by announcing on the Internet, saying it would allow him to talk directly to voters.
“This is going to be something unique in American politics and something I think is the wave of the future,” Mr. Gilmore said.
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