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Obama’s Worst Moment Is Clinton’s Best?

April 12, 2016 · 8:33 am ET · 68 Comments

Vanity Fair: “Hillary Clinton has often found herself on the defensive when asked to name her accomplishments as secretary of state, and Barack Obama isn’t making things any easier. Asked during an interview Sunday to name the ‘worst mistake’ of his presidency, Obama said it was failing to anticipate the fallout from toppling Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011—one of the policies cited by Clinton as one of her chief accomplishments when she headed the State Department.”

Said Obama: “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya.”

“As secretary of state, Clinton was one of the strongest proponents of the U.S. intervention in the Libyan civil war against Gadhafi; according to the New York Times, the decision to commit military assets to ending the dictator’s 42-year-old regime was ‘arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.’ While Obama has now pointed to that decision multiple times as one of his biggest regrets, he has also used the same logic to defend his reticence to intervene in Syria, where Clinton has urged a more militaristic approach, including a no-fly zone.”

2016 Campaign, Foreign Affairs Hillary Clinton

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Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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