Hillary Clinton bombed!!!

As a presidential candidate, you can always rely on your rehearsed answers, but if you cannot improvise and use focused answers against the moderator and your other opponents, then how can you display leadership and tact in a debate?

Hillary Clinton learned that the hard way.

Despite her denial as the perennial frontrunner, she still leads in most opinion polls and has raised the most cash. She would have to realized that the rest of the candidates will attack her head on.

She avoided direct answers to dealing with Social Security, Iran's nuclear ambitions, and Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

On Social Security, moderator Tim Russert of NBC News asked Clinton why she told an Iowa voter, in an offstage comment overheard by an Associated Press reporter, that she was open to raising the cap on payroll taxes when the proposal is not part of her platform.

Clinton said she did not have a "private position" on Social Security. She would convene a bipartisan commission to recommend ways to strengthen the program, she said, and all the well-known suggestions "would be considered."

Bush did that too. How about taking a step forward and give us your ideas face to face? We are not going to wait until next year. Most folks would like to know what can be done to help strengthen Social Security. At least Huckabee presented an idea for personal accounts and letting younger workers choose to opt out of Social Security.

Asked whether she still agrees with New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s plan to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants, Clinton launched into a long, complicated defense of it.

But when Chris Dodd attacked the idea a moment later, Clinton quickly said: “I did not say that it should be done.”

NBC’s Tim Russert, one of the debate moderators, jumped in and said to her: “You told (a) New Hampshire paper that it made a lot of sense. Do you support his plan?”

”You know, Tim,” Clinton replied, “this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’ ”

As for Clinton's campaign team, they blame Tim Russert for being 'unfair.' Nice cheapshot.

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