Clinton cries gender, opponents cry foul

CONCORD, N.H. — Sen. Hillary Clinton found herself the object of rare ridicule and criticism Friday for injecting gender into the presidential campaign as Democratic and Republican opponents blistered her for parsing her words, engaging in secrecy and blaming the male candidates for the controversy.

Even as she denied playing the gender card, she evoked gender with a reference to her own familiarity with the kitchen.

"I don't think they're piling on because I'm a woman, I think they're piling on because I'm winning," Clinton told reporters at the State House, where she filed papers to officially place her name on the New Hampshire ballot. "I anticipate it's going to get even hotter. And if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and I'm very much at home in the kitchen."

In Tuesday night's Democratic debate, Clinton bobbled a question about illegal immigrants getting driver's licenses in New York, appearing to both support the idea and later distance herself from it. Her campaign responded with a video showing each of her male candidates zeroing in on her. And at Wellesley College on Thursday, she said the school had prepared her for "the all-boys-club of presidential politics."

(A little more than a week ago, she curiously noted that winning the Iowa caucuses might prove difficult for her because the Hawkeye State had never elected a woman governor or senator).

It was an unusual moment for a campaign that has banked on women voters to provide the winning edge, while insisting that Clinton's own experience transcends gender. But while she portrays herself as strong, experienced and able to exact change, her opponents say she is playing the victim. And her remarks on gender seemed to open up a new vein of attack.

Most pointed was from Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who took her to task on the "Today" show Friday, noting that he didn't complain when the first several questions at a previous debate placed him in the crosshairs.

"I didn't come out and say, 'Look, I'm being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage,' " Obama said. "We're not running for the president of the city council. We're running for the president of the United States of America."

His campaign manager, David Plouffe, used the gender flap as a reason to bring up the issue of secrecy. He issued a fundraising appeal that slammed Clinton for not releasing her White House records from her eight years as first lady. "It's time to turn the page on this kind of secrecy and restore trust in our government," he wrote.

Former President Clinton said Friday that a letter he wrote to the National Archives was to expedite release of those records.

Sen. Clinton was quizzed during this week's Democratic presidential debate as to why correspondence between her and her husband from their White House years remained bottled up at the National Archives.

Obama said that was a problem for her as a candidate after "we have just gone through one of the most secretive administrations in our history."

One issue is whether President Clinton had sent a letter to the archives asking that the communications not be released until 2012, and whether Hillary Clinton would lift any ban, a question raised by moderator Tim Russert.

"She was incidental to the letter, it was done five years ago, it was a letter to speed up presidential releases, not to slow them down," the former president told reporters Friday. "And she didn't even, didn't know what he was talking about. And now that I've described to you what the letter said, you can readily understand why she didn't know what he was talking about."

As for the gender issue, even the Republicans weighed in.

"The Clinton campaign goes so far in relying upon her being a strong, strong woman ... and then on a dime, they can switch to say, 'Oh my goodness, the men are ganging up on her,' " former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., told ABC News. "You can't have that both ways in American politics, and they're just beginning to find that out."

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report