Twenty Minutes With Hillary

[April 9th, 2008]

Hillary Clinton never seemed further from the White House and its glamour than last Saturday.

During a campaign swing April 5 through Oregon, the Democratic presidential hopeful was in Hillsboro, 3,000 miles from Washington, D.C., sitting in a chair talking to WW under fluorescent lights in Liberty High School’s sports-training room.

If we had any doubt about how badly the New York senator and former first lady wants to be president, it vanished when she spent 20 minutes surrounded by Powerade coolers and sweat-soaked massage tables, making her pitch for Portland’s progressive vote.

Clinton told the enthusiastic crowd of about 3,500 people in Hillsboro whether she’ll stay in the race (she will) and what she thinks of her Democratic rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (too many empty promises). We hit her with a mix of Oregon-specific questions before asking her the offbeat ones.

Here’s what she had to say about timber payments, domestic partnerships and why Bill Clinton may not have been president without her.

WW: You said in your remarks that placing liquefied natural gas facilities in Oregon should be a local decision and that you worked against an LNG project in New York. What did you do?

Hillary Clinton: Several years ago there was a proposal to put an LNG terminal in the middle of Long Island Sound. But I and other elected officials and activist groups...joined together and had a lot of activity around our opposition to this. We held press conferences, we went down to the beach right across from where the terminal would have been, we filed papers talking about how damaging it would be and dangerous as well. And then the [2005 Energy Policy Act] basically stripped us of the ability to contest it, and similarly here in Oregon with these three proposed sites.

Do you object on environmental grounds, or is it just not a good energy mix?

All the above and more.… In the absence of independent environmental assessments, there should not be siting decisions made. I also object to it on the basis that we’ve got to come up with our Declaration of Energy Independence plan, as I call it, to really look at how we’re going to move away from carbon-based energy and create incentives for renewables. Why would we be moving down this track until we saw where it fit into our broader plan to improve our security and reduce or reverse global warming and create jobs in renewables? That should be our priority now.

Oregon stands to lose some $8 million over five years in timber payments to rural counties. Do you support keeping that money in the budget?

I support [Oregon] Sen. [Ron] Wyden’s efforts to do that.… If it came down to it and my vote was necessary, I would come back [to the Senate] and vote in order to make sure that it was reinstated. It’s a breach of faith. It’s an incredible burden on rural counties that are deprived of a tax base because of all of the federally owned property. It goes hand in hand with the Bush administration’s failure to implement a sensible forest policy that would actually put people to work thinning the forests.

Do you ever see a time when those payments will go away?

I think if there were one, it would have to be far enough out that people could plan for it. You don’t just drop it on them and say, “Sorry, you’re not going to get any more payments, you’re done.”

What would you do as president about the federal government not recognizing Oregon’s Medical Marijuana Program as legal?

We’ve got to have a clear understanding of the workings of pain relief and the control of pain. And there needs to be greater research and openness to the research that’s already been done. I don’t think it’s a good use of federal law-enforcement resources to be going after people who are supplying marijuana for medicinal purposes.

So you’d stop the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s raids on medical marijuana grows?

What we would do is prioritize what the DEA should be doing, and that would not be a high priority. There’s a lot of other more important work that needs to be done.

Should medical marijuana be covered by insurance?

I don’t have enough information to know anything about that.

President Clinton in 1996 signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions. Did you support that decision?

I did. It proved to be a wise decision because it enabled us to prevent the [2006] Federal Marriage Amendment from passing. I was one of the leaders in the fight against that. I was responsible for coordinating the strategy with the LGBT community, and [because of] DOMA and our ability to say marriage does not belong in the federal Constitution…we were able to defeat it.

Would you try to change DOMA as president?

I would like to repeal that part of the DOMA act which prevents the federal government from extending full benefits to same-sex couples. And I will work and achieve that, because then Social Security and every other benefit that is related to federal service or federal citizenship would be as widely available for same-sex couples as for straight couples, and that is exactly the way it should happen. That gives Oregon the right to decide what it wants to do, but the federal government has to stand behind that for it to be fully realized.

Is Wyden’s Healthy Americans Act a model for your own healthcare plan?

I’m very impressed with the work that Ron has done. I believe it’s the first bipartisan universal healthcare act ever introduced in the Senate.… If Sen. Wyden’s bill were to come to my desk as president, I would sign it. I am in favor of universal health care…. If we can get universal health care, that is a dream fulfilled for me.

Did you co-sponsor Wyden’s bill?

No, I haven’t co-sponsored it yet because I have my own plan, and my plan has certain features that I really like about it. I think it’s somewhat less drastic a change than Sen. Wyden’s bill would be. It leaves people who are happy with what they have exactly the status quo, with no disruption.

With Oregon the only state to allow assisted suicide, what role should the federal government have in either regulating it or extending it?

I respect Oregon’s decision-making on this issue.… A state like Oregon can blaze the trail, so to speak, and tell us whether this has problems that need to be addressed. Personally I have a lot of questions about assisted suicide, but I don’t think it’s the role of the federal government to substitute its judgment for a well-conceived and appropriately regulated and implemented system that a state wishes to support.

About 3,500 Oregon National Guard troops will be deployed for action in 2009 either in Afghanistan or Iraq. If you were president, is there any chance they would be sent to Iraq?

No.

If you and Bill Clinton had never met, where would you be today?

This is almost impossible, because we’ve been together for so long. I believe that he would have been in public life and been very successful. He would have gone to Arkansas, as he did, because he loved Arkansas. He would have run for office and he would have been elected. Whether or not he would have been president, who knows, that’s so unpredictable. I think that I would have lived and worked probably somewhere on the East Coast, maybe Washington but more likely New York or Boston, two cities that I really love. I would have probably continued work as a child advocate.

You wouldn’t have run for office?

I never thought that I had any interest in being in elected life. I was always interested in changing conditions that affected people, particularly kids.

If you had to get a tattoo, what would it be?

If I was under duress? Gosh, I have been asked millions of questions, and no one has ever asked me that. I have so little interest in having a tattoo, that I just am going to have to ponder this. It can be really, really small, right? I think it would be really, really small, like under a microscope, and it would say “love.”

Where would you put it?

(laughing) I’m not gonna tell you that!

^WEB EXCLUSIVE

Are there things your husband and his administration could have done better in boosting clean energy?

It’s fair to say that the only tax credits that the Republican congress would not approve are the ones that [President] Bill [Clinton] and [Vice President] Al Gore presented for changing the energy mix and providing consumers with incentives to buy clean energy and gas-efficient cars. The Republican Congress, starting in 1995, was dead set against doing what needed to be done. I think that there are always opportunities for improvement. Certainly Vice President Gore led the charge and was really committed, my husband as well, but didn’t get as far as they wished they could have gotten.

What do you think of Oregon’s vote-by-mail system as a national model?

I think Oregon has enough experience with it and a track record that certainly answers a lot of questions that people have as to whether it can be safe, fraud-proof. Oregon has a great experience with it. Most other states are only at the beginning of exploring that. So I hope if states decide to pursue it, they learn how Oregon has done it so effectively all these years. I want to make voting as easy as possible so the maximum amount of people can participate, but I also want to make sure that it is as accountable as it needs to be.

Should there be a federal role to fund pilot projects?

I think there could well be.… It is outrageous that in our country we can’t seem to run elections that give people confidence in the outcomes. Other countries manage to do it. They use all different kinds of systems, from India to Europe, with results that people accept, and we just keep stumbling over how we’re going to vote. So I believe strongly that we need federal support. We have a commission that was set up, the [U.S.] Election Assistance Commission, under the [Help America Vote] Act. It’s never been funded, it’s never been given any real support, it’s not asked to play a visible role. Contrast that for example with the way India has a civil service, almost like a federal reserve board, running their elections, totally nonpartisan, and the people are given great authority and resources to conduct these elections, and from everything I know, do it with a real sense of acceptance by the electorate. So let’s tap the federal government to play that role in trying to move us forward.