Obama, Clinton Spar Over Cuba, Health Care
N.Y. Senator Accuses Front-Runner Of Plagiarism, Says He Represents "Change You Can Xerox"
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Democratic presidential hopefuls Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., respond to a question during a Democratic presidential debate in Austin, Texas, Feb. 21, 2008. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
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Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., right, and Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., stand together before participating in a Democratic presidential debate at the University of Texas, Austin, Recreation Sports Center, in Austin, Texas, Feb. 21, 2008. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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Supporters of Democratic presidential hopefuls, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., show their support outside the venue prior to the Democratic presidential debate in Austin, Texas, Feb. 21, 2008. (AP Photo/Harry Cabluck)
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Play CBS Video Video Can Clinton Catch Obama? Can Hillary Clinton stunt Obama's surge at the next Democratic debate? Senior political correspondent Jeff Greenfield and Chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer weigh in.
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Video Obama Meets Longhorns In Tex. "Only On The Web": Barack Obama visits Univ. of Texas and tosses the pigskin with a few Longhorns. Obama also gets a hand from UT Coach Mack Brown when a reporter asks about John McCain and lobbyists.
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Video Bill Clinton: All On Texas "CBS News RAW": Speaking before a crowd of Hillary Clinton supporters, husband Bill admitted the importance of winning the critical states of Texas and Ohio in the upcoming primary.
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Photo Essay Barack Obama A look at the life and meteoric rise of the president-elect.
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Photo Essay Hillary Clinton A look at a life and career full of firsts.
But Obama, who has won more primaries and caucuses said the contests must "count for something ... that the will of the voters ... is what ultimately will determine who our next nominee is going to be."
Clinton went into the debate needing a change in the course of the campaign, and waited patiently for an opening to try to diminish her rival, seated inches away on the stage. "I think you can tell from the first 45 minutes Senator Obama and I have a lot in common," she said.
Barely pausing for breath, she went on to say there were differences.
First, she said she had seen a supporter of Obama interviewed on television recently, and unable to name a single accomplishment the Illinois senator had on his record.
"Words are important and words matter but actions speak louder than words," she said.
Obama agreed with that, then noted that Clinton lately had been urging voters to turn against him by saying, "let's get real."
"And the implication is that the people who've been voting for me or are involved in my campaign are somehow delusional," Obama said.
Clinton also raised Obama's use in his campaign speeches of words first uttered by his friend, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.
"If your candidacy is going to be about words then they should be your own words," she said. "...Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox."
The debate audience booed.
Obama said the entire controversy was evidence of a "silly season" that the public finds dispiriting. Besides, he said of his speeches at one point, "I've got to admit, some of them are pretty good."
The two rivals sat next to one another in swivel chairs in a University of Texas auditorium for the 90-minute debate, one in a dwindling number of opportunities for the former first lady to chart a new course in the presidential race.
She has lost 11 straight primaries and caucuses to Obama - including an overseas competition for support among Americans living aboard - and has fallen behind in the chase for the number of delegates needed to become the presidential nominee.
Obama's strong showing has made him the man to beat in a historic struggle between a black man and a white woman, and even former President Bill Clinton has said his wife must win both Ohio and Texas early next month to preserve her candidacy. New polls show Texas a dead heat, and give Clinton a lead in Ohio, but far smaller than the one she held in recent weeks.
Rhode Island and Vermont also vote on March 4, but offer far fewer delegates and have drawn less attention.
The encounter was the 19th in an episodic series of debates and forums, a run that has ranged from highly civilized to hotly confrontational.
The last time the two met, in Los Angeles, they sat side by side and disagreed politely. But in an earlier encounter last month, in Myrtle Beach, S.C., each accused the other of repeatedly and deliberately distorting the truth for political gain in a highly personal, finger-wagging showdown.
In The Associated Press' delegate count Thursday, Obama had 1,358.5 to 1,264 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 delegates to claim the nomination at this summer's convention.
In a further sign of his growing strength, Obama won the endorsement during the day of the Change to Win labor federation, which claims 6 million members. The Teamsters union announced its support for Obama on Wednesday.
The debate was sponsored by CNN, Univision and the Texas Democratic Party.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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I hesitate to ask, but were you asleep when Bush stole into the Oval Office and did exactly what your laundry list of nightmares details?
You worry--
1. Would He CHANGE the way to make it easy for terrorists to get into this country to over throw this country?
2. Would He CHANGE the laws for any of His kind?
3. Would He hang out with those who supported tyranny against this country?
4. Would He impose martial law? (in de facto fashion, of course)
5. Could He start unjust wars for His hidden ideology?
6. Could His decisions CHANGE the course for America?
7. Would He CHANGE your civil liberties?
8. Would He CHANGE your mind that you voted for Him? (most have already, in utter disgust with Bush)
Exactly what were you thinking for the past seven years-- or not, as the case may be?
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Posted by tru_america1 at 02:25 PM : Feb 23, 2008
Well, sir, I agree that hope inspires people to do great things. But what we have here is two people with almost the exact same vision...
Are you going to go with the buffooon whose track record is very iffy? Or are you going to with a person that has a demonstrated track record for actually getting the job done?
Considering that we have just had one inexperienced buffoon in our White House, and considering that most of Obama''s support comes from youth following a cultist star who can barely find Washington, DC on the map!
When I fly in an airplane I want the pilot with the most experience, not the one who can inspire hope in me that I get to where I am going. When I pay my taxes, I want the person filing them to be experienced, not the new person who inspires hope in me that he can do the job. When I hire someone to fix my washing machine, I want the tried and true experienced person, not the one who inspires me to hope that he can fix it. When I go to the doctor I do not want to get the one who inspires hope in me that s/he can cure what''''''''''''''''s wrong, but the one who knows what the hell to do the minute I call. It''''''''''''''''s not really the job of a public servant to inspire, but to get the job that the people demand done. The democrats think that if they have hope and are inspired things will get better, but they actually won''''''''''''''''t. When Oprah makes her employees sign her fifty page non-disclosure statement, she doesn''''''''''''''''t "hope" they can''''''''''''''''t break it, she pays teams of experienced lawyers to MAKE SURE they can''''''''''''''''t break it, or be sued in an experienced court by an experienced judge.
I have to agree with this post!
Go Hillary ''08!
If there was a secret radical Muslim in the white house as president what would He CHANGE?
by William D. Hartung
One issue that will not be discussed in tonight%u2019s presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is our nation%u2019s burgeoning military budget. Earlier this month, the Bush administration announced a proposed military budget of $614 billion, not counting the full cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This represents the highest level of spending since World War II, even though our most dangerous adversary is a dispersed terrorist network measured in the tens of thousands, not a nuclear-armed Soviet Union whose armed forces were measured in the millions.
If Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen have their way, these massive levels of spending will continue even after the end of the war in Iraq, with a %u201Cfloor%u201D on military spending of 4% of our Gross Domestic Product.
Not only have the major presidential candidates been largely silent on these record expenditures, but they want to increase them. Barack Obama has said we will probably need to %u201Cbump up%u201D the military budget in a new administration, and both he and Hillary Clinton have committed themselves to increasing the size of the armed forces by tens of thousands of troops. On the Republican side of the aisle, John McCain and Mike Huckabee are looking to spend even more than their Democratic counterparts.
(cont)
We are long overdue for a national debate on how much we actually need to defend America in an era in which our greatest threat is the possibility that a terrorist group might get its hands on nuclear weapons. Even if Iraq had possessed nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons, military force would not have been the most effective way to address the problem. The lesson of Iraq is that rigorous inspections are the best way to root out dangerous weapons programs.
More importantly, the most likely route for a terrorist group to get its hands on nuclear weapons is not by receiving them as a %u201Cgift%u201D from an existing nuclear weapons state, but by stealing bombs or bomb-making materials from a nation like Russia where they are not adequately secured. Much progress has been made on this front through the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program, which invests in dismantling and protecting so-called loose nukes and bomb-making materials in Russia and other nations around the world. Despite these successes, there is much more to be done. Yet the Bush administration has actually proposed cutting Nunn-Lugar funding in this year%u2019s budget, to $414 million dollars, or less than two days worth of spending on the war in Iraq.
(cont)
(cont)
As for conventional threats, the United States is already spending more for defense than all the other nations in the world combined. If all of these lavish expenditures were needed to protect the country that would be one thing. But tens of billions of dollars are being wasted on systems like the F-22 fighter plane, the V-22 Osprey (a helicopter that can be transformed into a conventional aircraft), the Virginia class submarine, and an unworkable and unnecessary missile defense system. All of these programs were initiated during the Cold War, and none of them is suited to current challenges. Likewise, proposals for troop increases presume that we might once again engage in a military occupation like the current conflict in Iraq - an unwise course which should be ruled out in any new defense strategy.
(cont)
Furthermore, there are far more urgent uses for some of the funds now devoted to the military, from investments designed to reverse the current recession, to spending to curb the threat of climate change, to beefed up spending on diplomacy. A recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies has revealed that our government currently spends 88 times as much on the military as we do on addressing climate change. And even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has called for an expansion of the U.S. diplomatic corps, which is currently smaller than the crews needed to run one aircraft carrier task force. To its credit, the Bush administration has requested funded for 1,000 new diplomats in this year%u2019s budget, but this is just a small down payment on what is needed.
So, rather than artificially reserving a fixed share of our national income for military spending, we should adjust the budget based on a critical assessment of what is actually needed to protect the country. If this debate doesn%u2019t begin during this year%u2019s presidential and congressional elections, it will be that much harder for the next president to rein in our current practice of overspending on the Pentagon.
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board of Foreign Policy In Focus.
Furthermore, there are far more urgent uses for some of the funds now devoted to the military, from investments designed to reverse the current recession, to spending to curb the threat of climate change, to beefed up spending on diplomacy. A recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies has revealed that our government currently spends 88 times as much on the military as we do on addressing climate change. And even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has called for an expansion of the U.S. diplomatic corps, which is currently smaller than the crews needed to run one aircraft carrier task force. To its credit, the Bush administration has requested funded for 1,000 new diplomats in this year%u2019s budget, but this is just a small down payment on what is needed.
So, rather than artificially reserving a fixed share of our national income for military spending, we should adjust the budget based on a critical assessment of what is actually needed to protect the country. If this debate doesn%u2019t begin during this year%u2019s presidential and congressional elections, it will be that much harder for the next president to rein in our current practice of overspending on the Pentagon.
William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board of Foreign Policy In Focus.
- Posted by pilgrimsway at 10:47 PM : Feb 22, 2008
So did America"s Founding Fathers.
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