WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton blasted Barack Obama yesterday as “irresponsible and, frankly, naive” for saying he would meet the anti-American leaders of Iran, Venezuela and North Korea during his first year in the White House.
Obama fired back that what was “irresponsible and naive” was Clinton’s vote in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war.
The testy exchange – the harshest yet between the top two Democratic presidential candidates – spilled out in separate interviews with the Quad City Times in Iowa yesterday and stemmed from Monday night’s debate in South Carolina.
In response to a question during the debate, Obama pledged – without any preconditions – to meet with the leaders of rogue nations Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea during his first term in the White House.
When the same question was put to Clinton, she said pointedly that she would not agree ahead of time to such meetings.
“I will use a lot of high-level presidential envoys to test the waters, to feel the way,” Clinton said.
“But certainly, we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and, you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria until we know better what the way forward would be.”
She added, “I don’t want to be used for propaganda purposes.”
Clinton and Obama took their differences to Iowa yesterday in separate interviews.
“I thought that was irresponsible and, frankly, naive,” Clinton said of Obama’s debate remarks.
Later, Obama told the paper that Clinton had “fabricated” the controversy in a bid to portray him as lacking in diplomatic experience.
“What she’s somehow maintaining is my statement could be construed as not having asked what the meeting was about,” he told the paper. “I didn’t say these guys were going to come over for a cup of coffee some afternoon.”
The Obama campaign also charged Clinton had flip-flopped on diplomacy, nothing that earlier this year she said it would be a “terrible mistake for our president to say he will not talk with bad people.”
In a memo to reporters titled “Obama wins debate and commander-in-chief test,” Obama aides said: “She reversed herself last night, disagreeing with Senator Obama’s assertion that we should use every tool at the president’s disposal to address problems before they become threats.”
The Clinton camp responded by trotting out Madeleine Albright, who was secretary of state for President Bill Clinton.
“I felt that she really understood the process, the value of the presidency, how you use it,” Albright said. “And that you can’t use it to advance propaganda. So it made a lot of sense to me.”