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ShareORANGEBURG, S.C. - The leading Democratic candidates for president, attempting to project strength on national security while condemning the war in Iraq, portrayed themselves as resolute in the fight against terrorism Thursday night during the first in a series of televised debates.
Confronting a broad array of sometimes personal questions - ranging from regretted mistakes to their models of morality - they faced 90 minutes of questions in a live national telecast on MSNBC.
With an entertaining mix of spoken answers and hand-raising responses to some questions, only three of the eight candidates indicated they had never had a gun in their homes in their adult lifetimes. Those were the party’s three front-runners: Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.
Clinton and Obama averted any direct criticism from rivals. But Edwards was a target.
“The American people want candor. They don’t want blow-dried candidates with perfection,” said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
All three top candidates were attacked in general by Mike Gravel, a former senator from Alaska.
“I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me. ... They frighten me,” Gravel said. Asked which ones worry him, he said: “I would say the top-tier ones, the top-tier ones.”
The leading candidates devoted much of their time on stage at South Carolina State University to maintaining their own positions in the race and bolstering their images as tough on terrorism.
“As a senator from New York,” Clinton said, “it is something that I’ve worked on very hard ever since 9/11 to try to convince the administration to do those things that would actually work to make us safer.”
Obama, who already had answered a question about handling terrorism once, returned to the issue without prompting later - in an apparent attempt to underscore his point.
“We have genuine enemies out there that have to be hunted down,” Obama said. “There is no contradiction between us intelligently using our military, and in some cases lethal force, to take out terrorists, and at the same time building the sort of alliances and trust around the world that has been so lacking.”
Clinton’s apparent advantage over Obama among Democratic voters has narrowed to just 5 percentage points nationally, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, which found 36 percent supporting Clinton and 31 percent Obama - a much closer contest than one month ago, when Clinton held a 12-point edge.
The Clinton campaign, dismissing this poll as “an outlier” in a range of surveys, pointed to a new Pew Research Center poll, taken April 18-22, that showed Clinton with a 10-point advantage: Clinton 34, Obama 24.
Some of the questions in the premier debate simply went unanswered. Clinton was asked if she supports the contention of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that the war in Iraq is lost.
“The American people have spoken,” Clinton said. “The Congress has voted as of today to end this war, and now we can only hope that the president will listen. ... This is not America’s war to win or lose.”
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., avoided the same question. “Look, Brian, this is not a game show,” Biden told moderator Brian Williams. “This is not a football game. This is not win or lose.”
And Obama was asked how he can reconcile his comment that the war is “dumb” with the sacrifice that many American troops have made.
“I am proud that I opposed this war from the start,” Obama said. “But the American people have said - Republicans and Democrats - that it’s time to end this war.”
Edwards, reminded that he had apologized for his Senate vote authorizing the war and had called his apology a matter of “conscience,” was asked if this is a shot at Clinton, who also voted to authorize military force but has not apologized.
“No,” Edwards said, “I think that’s a question for the conscience of anybody who voted for this war.”
Clinton, in rebuttal, said: “I take responsibility for my vote. ... And I’ve said many times that if I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way.”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who opposed the war in Iraq, said this about members of Congress with him on stage: “Every time you vote to fund the war, you are reauthorizing the war all over again.”
Some of the most personal questioning was revealing. Edwards, asked whom he considers his moral leader, paused for a long and uncomfortable moment, seemingly at a loss for an answer.
“I don’t think I could identify one person that I consider to be my moral leader,” Edwards said. “My Lord is important to me. ... My wife ... is a source of great conscience for me. My father ...”
They were asked a television viewer’s question: What is their biggest mistake of the last four years?
Obama offered his biggest mistake: “There was a debate about Terri Schiavo, and a lot of us, including me, left the Senate with a bill that allowed Congress to intrude where it shouldn’t have.”
In 2005, Congress approved legislation allowing the federal courts to review the case of Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman who was due to be removed from life support under a Florida court order. Most senators, including Obama, were away for an Easter recess.
Edwards, who recently billed his campaign for a $400 haircut, was asked about the propriety of the campaign paying for it.
“That was a mistake, which we’ve remedied - it was simply a mistake,” Edwards said.
Candidates were tested on questions that expose cultural divides, such as the gun question, which identified five people who’d had a gun in their households as an adult: Biden, Kucinich, Richardson, Gravel and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut.
And Clinton was asked if, overall, Wal-Mart is a good thing or a bad thing for the United States.
“Well, it’s a mixed blessing,” Clinton said. “When Wal-Mart started, it brought goods into rural areas ... and gave people a chance to stretch their dollar further. As they grew much bigger, though, they have raised serious questions about the responsibility of corporations.”
But it is Biden who holds the prize for the shortest answer of the night. Biden, who has been embarrassed by some of his comments during the campaign, was asked if he can reassure the public that, if elected, he will have the “discipline” needed on the world stage.
“Yes,” said Biden, stopping and smiling, as silence on stage prompted laughter from the audience.
