Clinton: ‘Differences of degree’ with Obama

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NEW DELHI | When President Obama named Hillary Rodham Clinton as his secretary of state, many political observers wondered how the two bitter Democratic rivals and their staffs would mesh and whether Mrs. Clinton would be willing to take a backseat to Mr. Obama in the media limelight.

On Monday, half a world away from Washington, Mrs. Clinton admitted there were “some differences of degrees, but not necessarily differences of kind” between her and the president that had become “magnified” in the heat of last year’s campaign.

While she offered no specifics, The Washington Times reported last month that Mrs. Clinton urged the president to take a tougher line sooner on Iran’s crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators. The two have also clashed on the appointment of political supporters as ambassadors, and Mrs. Clinton has expressed frustration with a stringent White House vetting process that has left key positions — such as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development — unfilled six months into the administration.

Coupled with the secretary’s need to recover from a fractured elbow and the proliferation of special envoys on key issues such as Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli conflict, the impression has grown that Mrs. Clinton — a former senator and first lady with extensive experience abroad — was being eclipsed.

On Monday, she addressed the issue head-on.

“The [2008] campaign magnified the differences more than they actually are,” Mrs. Clinton said in response to a student’s question during a town hall meeting at Delhi University on Monday. “That’s what happens in campaigns. … You draw differences and try to make them seem extremely large in order to convince people to vote for you and against the other person.

“Both the president and I see the world in the same terms — as interconnected, interdependent — where we want more partners, where we want more allies. We are very open to other perspectives.”

Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, said Tuesday that Mrs. Clinton’s apologizing for the United States being a major contributor to climate change was poorly timed and will further doom Capitol Hill legislation to limit carbon-dioxide emissions.

Mr. Inhofe, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeated the argument that cap-and-trade legislation on manufacturing pollution will only send jobs overseas to India and China.

“In an environment like that, to have the secretary of state go over to India and apologize for what old America has done — I’m so tired of people apologizing for us,” Mr. Inhofe told The Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show. (For the rest of the interview with Mr. Inhofe, click here.)

Referring to President Obama’s recent statement in Italy that the United States had “sometimes fallen short” of its responsibilities in controlling carbon emissions, Mrs. Clinton said during her trip to India that “we acknowledge now with President Obama that we have made mistakes in the United States, and we along with other developed countries have contributed most significantly to the problem that we face with climate change.”

The secretary’s three-day trip ended Monday with Indian leaders saying they would not cave to U.S. pressure to commit to a deal requiring them to meet targets to reduce emissions, despite assurances the plan would not slow the country’s economic growth.

“We are hoping a great country like India will not make the same mistakes,” Mrs. Clinton said.

During the campaign, Mrs. Clinton took a harder line on negotiations with the leaders of countries such as Iran and suggested in a television commercial that she, not Mr. Obama, would be better equipped to deal with a foreign crisis that erupted at 3 a.m.

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