Hillary Clinton Refuses to Bash Sarah Palin on Nightline

Nightline’s Cynthia McFadden’s recent failed attempts to get Hillary Clinton to bash Sarah Palin reminded me of Steve Croft’s interview with Clinton on Sixty Minutes during the primary. Croft kept badgering Clinton in his blatant efforts to trip her up. Later on, the media was only too happy to aid and abet the Obama camp’s efforts to smear Clinton with a malicious distortion of a truncated clip of one of her comments from that interview. Note: MediaMatters.Org later thoroughly debunked the Obama camp’s smear attempt.


McFadden was even more zealous than Croft, but again Clinton refused to take the bait; the transcript below shows McFadden’s growing frustration:

CYNTHIA MCFADDEN: It seemed like a good day to talk to Hillary Clinton about the other most famous woman in politics. Is Sarah Palin good for women?

HILLARY CLINTON: You know, I think that there has been a tendency in our discussions about Governor Palin's candidacy to sort of put it in this either/or. If you think the fact that she's on the ticket is a milestone, which I happen to think it is. She's obviously an accomplished political figure in her own right, having been elected governor of her state. Aren't many people who have done that. You can celebrate that and be, you know, very impressed by that, but still say the McCain/Palin ticket should not lead our country.

MCFADDEN: Is she ready to serve as commander in chief, senator?

CLINTON: Well, I believe that our ticket is much better.

MCFADDEN: Does she deserve, does she have the right to stand on your shoulders in this regard?

CLINTON: You know what, I think we all stand on other people's shoulders. I believe that you can hold two thoughts simultaneously. You can hold the thought that she's an extraordinary woman. But that doesn't mean that she and John McCain should lead our country. For a million reasons that I think people understand.

MCFADDEN: But it must rankle you, I mean, to be compared to Sarah Palin.

CLINTON: It doesn't. None of this rankles me at all. I mean it really doesn't.

MCFADDEN: You said something just a moment ago downstairs that I must say made sit up straighter.

CLINTON: [Speech clip]: You know, I didn't set out to run as a woman for president, but that's the only way I could run. [Clip ends] Well, I was really saying, you know, I didn't consider myself the woman candidate. Although obviously I was. I mean, that's who I am. But as I got into the campaign and realized that's how people were seeing me, for better or for worse in some situations, that there was this historical burden that I was carrying, that I had not anticipated. It became apparent that there's a lot of unfinished business in our country when it comes to gender.