Bill has answered this, kinda. Regret rather than mistake.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/31/AR2005053101825_pf.html
20 minutes per question per candidate seems a bit excessive, but I agree in principal…these questions deserve a fully formed answer as it will say a lot about the individual candidates. I would be watching to see if they gloss over the answers or give non-answers (Mock Republican Candidate: Nothing good happened during the Clinton Presidency! He just got a blow job (last line edited out to save the children)!).
-XT
Something about not keeping a clean spare dress in the Oval Office closet.
I would only classify it as a fair question if it were rephrased as “what would you say was your biggest mistake during the Clinton adminstration?”
Regards,
Shodan
That is the easiest question in the world. Hillary can answer it in a single word.
“Monica.”
“We underestimated those shameless, completely unscrupulous Republicans; we failed to explain the health care initiative properly to the public; and, hm, that time I was baking cookies, I added just a dab too much vanilla.”
“Losing the goodwill and recognition I briefly had and truly deserved in my helping to calm things the fuck down and establish a lasting peace in Northern Ireland… Too bad my dick needed sucking, right?”
It’s like the stupid job interview question, “What is your greatest fault?”
“Bill cared too much about this country and worked too hard.”
Sure he would. He’s demonstrated it, too. It’s “Not taking Saddam out when he had a golden chance.”
The most accurate answer to the OP question might be “Trying to work with, rather than around, an opposition party with no interest in anything but opposition.” The politically-best answer would probably be something like “Failing to implement a broader health-care guarantee system for all Americans”.
Has Clinton ever claimed that her marriage makes her more qualified to be President? I would be surprised if this were true.
She’s answered this. It was something along the lines of “moving too fast on Health Care Reform”. I don’t know if she’s ever been asked what the Clinton’s administration in generals biggest mistake was (though I agree it’s a fair question, I think the GOP candidates have already been asked what the Bush amins biggest mistake was). It’s an easily forseeable question though, I’m sure she’ll be asked at some point, assuming she wins the nomination, and I’m sure she already has an answer prepped.
“Killing Vince Foster and Ron Brown. If I had it to do over again, I’d have killed some Republicans instead.”
I don’t know if she has, per se, but she has approached this primary fight with the assumed mantle of ‘experience’ as one of her prime selling points. I’ve seen her question Obama’s experience several times during debates. Considering she’s got just as much senatorial experience as John Edwards, and has a lead of only a few years in the Senate on Edwards, the assumption is that her time spent at Bill’s side in Little rock and DC counts for her.
Is there any question that Hillary portrays herself as the ‘experienced’ member of the frontrunner Dems? Or that she has any claim to that if one only counts her NY senate term?
I don’t doubt that she’d like people to perceive her as the most experienced choice. But I think there’s a distinction between claiming credit for the experience she gained during her time as First Lady (which she has every right to do), and claiming any credit strictly on the basis of her husband’s term in office. Obviously she herself was plenty active in Washington and elsewhere during that time, so why shouldn’t she claim that work as experience? It’s not like she was sitting around doing nothing all those years.
She’s not claiming that she learned the ropes just by being married to Bill, but rather by what she herself did during that time-- spearheading various programs advocating national health care, child care, women’s rights, etc. Her husband’s successes or failures as President have little if any bearing on those activities.
Similarly, her campaign cites her actions after 9/11 as evidence of her qualifications, but that’s not the same as claiming she’s more qualified just because she happened to be in office at the time.
Well, in hindsight, that was their greatest mistake. But how could they have known it at the time?