Clinton talks about economy, Iran and 2008

Keith Olbermann Anchor, 'Countdown' • Profile

A day before the crucial Pennsylvania primary, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton talks to Countdown's Keith Olbermann about the economy, Iran and the 2008 race.

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST, COUNTDOWN:  Sen. Clinton joins us now from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Thanks for some of your time tonight, senator.  How are you?

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  I’m great.  Thanks a lot, Keith.

OLBERMANN:  Let’s start with something that got remarkably short shrift in last week’s debate.

Is the election in the fall, in your estimation, going to be decided on the price of a gallon of gas and is it not true that a president can’t really do anything about the price of a gallon of gas?

CLINTON:  Well, I think it’s going to be very much influenced by the economy.  I don’t know what else might happen between now and then but it appears to me that the economy is not going to recover and in fact the price of gas is going to be a big issue.  I think oil hit $117 a barrel today which is just unbelievable.  When George Bush became president it was $20 a barrel.

I do think there are things that we can do in the short run.  I would, if I were president, launch an investigation to make sure that there’s not market manipulation going on.  I am still haunted by what we learned during the Enron scandal about those electricity traders manipulating the market and causing the people in California, Oregon and Washington to pay such high prices that were not at all related to supply and demand.

I’d also release some of the oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 

That has in the past had a good effect on lowering the cost at least in the short term.

And I would do what I could to try to alleviate the cost right now if we could come up with a way to make up for the lost revenue with a gas tax holiday, like, for example, a windfall profits tax on the oil companies on a basis to try to fill the highway trust fund while we let people off from paying the federal gas taxes.

I would consider that.  But you’re right.  Ultimately we’re going to have to have an energy policy that actually moves us from our dependence on foreign oil and being literally over the oil barrel with the oil producing countries and companies.  I think if the president were to make a speech tomorrow, Keith, and that’s the kind of speech I would give right now, that we are finally serious. 

We’ve had enough of the problems that come from being so dependent and not looking to ourselves to produce homegrown energy to fuel our vehicles, try to help our auto companies and auto workers, quickly move to higher gas mileage cars and more biofuels and all of the other solutions that are out there, you would see the price drop because I think the companies and the countries that supply our oil would be worried that we actually meant it this time.

And they would once again try to lull us into a false sense of security.  So I would do all of that and I think it would have an impact and then of course we have to follow through to make sure that we do everything we can to take back control over our own energy destiny.

OLBERMANN:  You mentioned the oil suppliers and that obviously leads us into something else that really flew by during the debate that seemed awfully important.  In that debate you were asked about a hypothetical Iranian attack on Israel and your hypothetical response as commander in chief and you said, let me read the quote exactly, “I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than Israel.  Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would include massive retaliation from the United States but I would do the same with other countries in the region.”

Can you clarify since there was no follow-up to that which hypothetical Middle East conflicts would incur massive retaliation by this country and what constitutes massive retaliation?

CLINTON:  Well, what we were talking about was the potential for a nuclear attack by Iran.  If Iran does achieve what appears to be its continuing goal of obtaining nuclear weapons — and I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times.  We used it very well during the Cold War when we had a bipolar world — and what I think the president should do and what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.

In addition, if Iran were to become a nuclear power it could set off an arms race that would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing because the countries in the region are not going to want Iran to be the only nuclear power so I could imagine that they would be rushing to obtain nuclear weapons themselves. 

In order to forestall that, creating some kind of a security agreement where we said, no, you do not need to acquire nuclear weapons if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States and hopefully our NATO allies would respond to that as well.

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