If you read carefully, you can learn quite a bit about Senator Clinton's presidential campaign from a recent interview with her in the local Valley News. Here are the opening paragraphs:
West Lebanon -- U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton yesterday rejected suggestions that she is running a scripted presidential campaign that is avoiding substantive answers, saying she is the most experienced Democrat in the field to take on Republicans.
“I want to govern as a progressive Democrat, but I'm going to run a disciplined campaign that is a winning campaign, and part of that means staying on message, so that's what I do, day in and day out,” Clinton said yesterday in a meeting with Valley News editors and reporters.
Someone will have to explain to me how she can simultaneously "stay on message" while rejecting suggestions that "she is running a scripted presidential campaign."
And what's this about being the most experienced Democrat? The article suggests an answer:
The former first lady, who recently turned 60, said her political activism dating back to the 1960s, and vast exposure to the national spotlight, leave her “better prepared to take on what needs to be done in Washington.” And she said her experience as first lady in the turbulent Clinton White House, and in running for Senate in her adopted state of New York, have steeled her to take on a general election campaign for the presidency.
“Speaking from experience, until you've been through it, you have no way of knowing how you are going to react. It is not an intellectual exercise; it is visceral,” Clinton said. “At the end of the day, I think I'm in the best position to win.”
So the experience in question is not experience in governing. It's experience in campaigning. Although it may not seem like it today, that campaign will end. Then what? More from the article:
“It's not just what I say on a stage in a debate, and what point I score and whether my opponents attack me, or whatever,” she said. “I try to think responsibly about, OK, when I'm president and I actually want to do this, how am I going to do it, and how am I going to avoid having said something during the campaign that will come back and undermine what I think my responsibility is, which is actually to get something done.”
She would apparently not want to be constrained in what she will do based on what she has said she will do. And, of course, we are supposed to cast our votes for her to "get something done," when we are not told in advance what that something will be.