Sweet: Obama says, “No, I, I, I, I, I have to, I heard, I heard, I don’t need it, I don't need to hear what you read because I was, I overheard it whe

DES MOINES, IA.—The Obama campaign faced a distraction on Thursday after some news outlets ran stories suggesting chief Obama strategist David Axelrod seemed to link Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vote to authorize the Iraq war with the assassination of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Sen. Barack Obama vigorously defended Axelrod during a CNN interview on Thursday evening for comments Axelrod made in the morning after a speech Obama delivered in Des Moines. The dust-up will likely be over by the time you read this and the news cycle has moved on.

The Des Moines remarks were Obama’s penultimate “change” speech, completely overshadowed by Bhutto’s murder. The terrorist attack returned the conversation to foreign policy.

In standing up for Axelrod, Obama fell back on one of his campaign standbys and blamed the off-message situation on “Washington,” as in “Washington is putting a spin on it.”

Obama got a little impatient with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer when Blitzer started to read him the Axelrod quote. One of the most accomplished speakers in the nation was reduced to stuttering as Obama tried to head off Blitzer from reading the quote on national television.

Blitzer asked, “Your chief political strategist, David Axelrod, causing some commotion out there today with his comments about Hillary Clinton, and blaming her—at least some are interpreting it this way—blaming her in part for a series of events that resulted in Benazir Bhutto's assassination today. Let me read to you what he said.”

Obama replied—and I think I nailed the quote here—“No, I, I, I, I, I have to, I heard, I heard, I don’t need it, I don't need to hear what you read because I was, I overheard it when he said it, and this is one of those situations where Washington is putting a spin on it. It makes no sense whatsoever.”

(Might you wonder what “I overheard it” means? One should not read this literally. Obama was not standing near Axelrod when he was talking to reporters after the speech. A bunch of reporters were interviewingAxelrod near the press risers at the back of the hall.)

Blitzer continued, “Tell us what he meant. Tell us what he meant.”

Obama said, “He was—he was—he was asked very specifically about the argument that the Clinton folks were making that somehow this was going to change the dynamic of politics in Iowa.

(At this point it was the reporter making the argument--asking if the assassination would bring the campaigns more to foreign policy and “that’s been more Hillary Clinton’s sort of strength, is that is that…that’s what the Clinton campaign will say, that this plays right into her strength.”)

Obama: “Now, first of all, that shouldn't have been the question.”

(Disputing a question is a technique Obama has used in the presidential debates when confronted with being asked something he did not want to specifically have to respond to. )

Obama then said, “The question should be, "how is this going to impact the safety and security of the United States," not "how is it going to affect a political campaign in Iowa."

"But his response was simply to say that if we are going to talk politics, then the question has to be, "who has exercised the kind of judgment that would be more likely to lead to better outcomes in the Middle East and better outcomes in Pakistan."

Obama went on to defend Axelrod, one of his closest advisors.

“He in no way was suggesting that Hillary Clinton was somehow directly to blame for the situation there. That is the kind of, I think, you know, gloss that sometimes emerges out of the heat of campaigns that doesn't make much sense, and I think you're probably aware of that, Wolf.”

Since a viewer by this point would have little idea what Obama was reacting to, Blitzer pressed ahead and read the quote.

That’s live television. Obama was trapped and Blitzer knew it.

Blitzer said, “ Well, I know that sometimes comments can be taken out of context and you're trying to give us the context. I'll just read to you what he said, and then I'm going to let you just respond. "She was," referring to Hillary Clinton, he said…

“Wolf!” said Obama.

Blitzer continued, reading the Axelrod quote: "She was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which, we would submit is one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Al Qaeda, who may still have been players in this event today. So, that's a judgment she'll have to defend. “

Here’s another version; I asked Axelrod, “Looking ahead, does the assassination put on the front burner foreign policy credentials in the closing days?

Axelrod replied, “Well, it puts on the table foreign policy judgment, and that's a discussion we welcome. Barack Obama had the judgment to oppose the war in Iraq, and he warned at the time it would divert us from Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, and now we see the effect of that. Al Qaeda's resurgent, they're a powerful force now in Pakistan, they may have been involved — we've been here, so I don't know whether the news has been updated, but there's a suspicion they may have been involved in this. I think his judgment was good. Sen. Clinton made a different judgment, so let's have that discussion.”

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2007/12/sweet_obama_says_no_i_i_i_i_i.html

NY Times: After Delay, Clinton Embarks on a Likability Tour

POLITICAL MEMO
After Delay, Clinton Embarks on a Likability Tour

By PATRICK HEALY
Published: December 19, 2007

DES MOINES — The tableau was classic Clinton: Bill Clinton chatting with African-American cashiers and baggers at a grocery store here Tuesday, telling them how wonderful Hillary Rodham Clinton was, while she waited quietly for him to finish so they could dazzle more voters.

The couple’s one-two political punch, still going strong after three decades, has special import now: Mrs. Clinton has embarked this week on a warm-and-fuzzy tour, blitzing full throttle by helicopter across Iowa to present herself as likable and heartwarming, a complement to her “strength and experience” message that the campaign felt a female candidate needed first.

Now another major question faces the Clinton team in Iowa: Did it wait too long to try to humanize Hillary? The presidential caucuses are little more than two weeks away, Mrs. Clinton’s negative poll ratings remain high, and some of her advisers wanted to accentuate her personal side earlier.

Instead, until now she has embraced a variety of other strategies, and faces a high hurdle as she competes for popularity against a familiar face (former Senator John Edwards) and a charismatic newcomer (Senator Barack Obama).

Mrs. Clinton addressed the challenge head-on with reporters Tuesday at the grocery store, a frenzied scene where Mr. Clinton delayed a photo opportunity with his wife by giving an interview to “Entertainment Tonight,” and where their special guest, the former basketball star Magic Johnson, was a bit off message in noting Mrs. Clinton’s experience rather than what a nice person she was.

As her husband and Mr. Johnson looked on, Mrs. Clinton told the reporters: “I know that people have been saying, ‘Well, you know, we’ve got to know more about her, we want to know more about her personally.’ And I totally get that. It’s a little hard for me. It’s not easy for me to talk about myself.”

Or, as Mr. Clinton put it a few minutes later, “We want to give people a good sense of her, not only as a leader but as a person.”

Mr. Clinton’s role in all this is particularly interesting. He has been unleashed in ways that he never was in the 2000 campaign, when his favored candidate, Al Gore, kept him on the bench. At that time, the Gore camp worried that Mr. Clinton was scandal-scarred and that the candidate needed to appear like his own man. (In 2004, Mr. Clinton was recovering from heart surgery and did not campaign for the Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry, until the final weeks.)

Mrs. Clinton appears to have fewer doubts about conveying independence. She is counting on her husband to help voters color in her human side, and Mr. Clinton has embraced that role with a vengeance.

“We faced Clinton fatigue and Clinton scandals in 2000, and had to navigate Gore around that, but now it’s very different,” said Donna Brazile, who served as a campaign manager for Mr. Gore and is a friend of the Clintons. “Bill Clinton has rehabilitated himself in terms of his stature, and he has a great opportunity to help her win.”

But he is only one weapon in the campaign’s efforts, as Mrs. Clinton said Tuesday, “to kind of round out who I am as a person.” After months of holding off campaign officials who wanted to roll out her mother, Dorothy, and her daughter, Chelsea, Mrs. Clinton recently relented, and the two women happily joined her in Iowa and were videotaped for soft-glow political commercials.

Farmers from New York State, some of them Republicans, are in Iowa talking to farmers about ways she has helped them, and her best friend from the sixth grade is touring Iowa telling stories like the one about the way Hillary Rodham would take off her thick glasses to flirt more confidently with boys.

The timing is delicate, however. For much of this year, the Clintons concentrated on arguing that Mrs. Clinton was tougher and better prepared than Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards, a posture intended not only to appeal to voters who wanted a tested leader but also to persuade them that a woman was strong enough to be commander in chief.

But since November, Iowans have been whipsawed with messages from Mrs. Clinton: She and her allies have attacked Mr. Obama to try to increase his negative ratings, argued in favor of her strength, portrayed her as a force for change and, now, highlighted her persona.

Inside the campaign, the communications director, Howard Wolfson, has been well known for urging that the humanizing effort start earlier, but the campaign decided to emphasize strength and experience instead. Now some voters and advisers wonder if her camp waited too long to address Mrs. Clinton’s personality.

At several of her campaign events recently, Iowans, even some of her own supporters, publicly asked if she was likable enough to win, and some noted that people found her “cold” and “remote.”

Ellen Sweet of Iowa City, who attended a Clinton rally on Monday night, said she was surprised at how nice Mrs. Clinton was.

“I’ve been pledged to Obama for so long, I can’t change, but she moved way up in my mind tonight,” Mrs. Sweet said. “She just came across as appealing and confident in her beliefs. I wish I had seen all these sides of her before.”

To be sure, some Iowans may not ultimately accept the warmer Mrs. Clinton as genuine.

At Mr. Clinton’s campaign stop with Mr. Johnson in Waterloo on Tuesday, Teresa Fagerlind, 58, an activities coordinator at a retirement village, said the former president had persuaded her to support Mrs. Clinton.

“He said some things about her that I hadn’t heard before,” Ms. Fagerlind said.

But her son, Matt, 28, was less persuaded, saying he was not sure that Mr. Clinton was the best one to vouch for his wife. “It’s like my mom saying how great I am,” he said.

Admitting that her own mistakes may have fed unfavorable impressions of her is still not the style of Mrs. Clinton. On Monday night, when asked by someone at the rally why there were people who did not like her, she did not criticize herself or delve into introspection.

“There are people who will never vote for me,” she said. “It breaks my heart, but it’s true.”

Katharine Q. Seelye contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/us/politics/19clintons.html?ref=politics

Washington Post: Clinton Under A Harsher Microscope?

Clinton Under A Harsher Microscope?
The Candidate's Coverage Is Bemoaned for Being Held To a Tougher Standard
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 19, 2007; Page C01

DES MOINES, Dec. 18 -- After weeks of bad news, Hillary Clinton and her strategists hoped that winning the endorsement of Iowa's largest newspaper last weekend might produce a modest bump in their media coverage.

But on Sunday morning, they awoke to upbeat headlines about their chief Democratic rival: "Obama Showing New Confidence With Iowa Sprint," said the New York Times. "Obama Is Hitting His Stride in Iowa," said the Los Angeles Times. And on Monday, Clinton aides were so upset about a contentious "Today" show interview that one complained to the show's producer.

Clinton's senior advisers have grown convinced that the media deck is stacked against them, that their candidate is drawing far harsher scrutiny than Barack Obama. And at least some journalists agree.

"She's just held to a different standard in every respect," says Mark Halperin, Time's editor at large. "The press rooted for Obama to go negative, and when he did he was applauded. When she does it, it's treated as this huge violation of propriety." While Clinton's mistakes deserve full coverage, Halperin says, "the press's flaws -- wild swings, accentuating the negative -- are magnified 50 times when it comes to her. It's not a level playing field."

Newsweek's Howard Fineman says Obama's coverage is the buzz of the presidential campaign. "While they don't say so publicly because it's risky to complain, a lot of operatives from other campaigns say he's getting a free ride, that people aren't tough enough on Obama," Fineman says. "There may be something to that. He's the new guy, an interesting guy, a pathbreaker and trendsetter perhaps."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton says the accusation of softer treatment is untrue but "the Clinton campaign whines about it so much, it becomes part of the chatter. No candidate in this race has undergone more investigations and examinations than Barack Obama has," he says, citing lengthy pieces in the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. "As Obama says, running against the Clintons is not exactly a cakewalk. Their research operation has ensured that if there's any information about Obama to be had, it's been distributed to the media."

The question, of course, is what journalists do with that information.

Asked for comment about the coverage of Clinton, her spokesman, Jay Carson, says: "I'll just say that at the Clinton campaign, we do our best to live by the old adage that it's not wise to pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrel."

For nearly a year, the New York senator was widely depicted as the inevitable nominee. But now many media accounts are casting her recent dip in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls as a disaster in the making.

"Slipping Away?" said a headline on ABC's "Good Morning America." "Hillary Clinton's campaign is teetering on the brink," Fineman wrote in Newsweek. CBS's Jim Axelrod said her operation is "reeling." The Los Angeles Times said she is facing her "most serious crisis." And a banner headline on the Drudge Report asked: "Is It the End?"

When Clinton's New Hampshire co-chairman resigned last week after raising the issue of Obama's adolescent drug use, the issue itself received scant treatment in the media because Obama had disclosed it in his 1995 autobiography. "He has been able, by luck or planning, to control his own story, because he wrote it first," Fineman says.

The Illinois senator's fundraising receives far less press attention than Clinton's. When The Washington Post reported last month that Obama used a political action committee to hand more than $180,000 to Democratic groups and candidates in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the suggestion that he might be buying support received no attention on the network newscasts. The Clinton team is convinced that would have been a bigger story had it involved the former first lady.

There was also a lack of media pickup when the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder reported that an Obama aide had sat down next to him and "wanted to know when reporters would begin to look into Bill Clinton's post-presidential sex life."

When NBC's David Gregory interviewed Hillary Clinton Monday during her round of morning-show appearances, he briefly noted her endorsement by the Des Moines Register before asking what had happened to her momentum. He pressed six times for a reaction to her husband's telling PBS's Charlie Rose that the country would "roll the dice" if it elected Obama. "So you're choosing not to answer that question," Gregory finally said.

Moments later, when Meredith Vieira interviewed John McCain, who had also won the Register's endorsement, most of the questions revolved around how he could win the Republican nomination despite trailing in the polls, with one query about his temper.

When Obama appeared on "Today" last month, Matt Lauer asked whether Clinton was playing the "gender card" against him, about his pledge to meet with hostile foreign leaders, and whether he thought the country was heading for a recession.

Journalists repeatedly described Obama as a "rock star" when he jumped into the race in January. His missteps -- such as when his staff mocked Clinton's position on the outsourcing of jobs overseas by referring to the Democrat not as representing a state but as "D-Punjab" -- generated modest coverage, but rarely at the level surrounding Clinton's mistakes. Some reporters told Clinton aides when she enjoyed a double-digit lead that she is held to a higher standard as the front-runner.

Obama did undergo something of a media audit earlier this year, with stories focusing on his record in the Illinois Senate and his ties to indicted fundraiser Tony Rezko. But his recent rise in the polls hasn't brought the kind of full-time frisking being visited on the hottest Republican, Mike Huckabee. In fact, much of the coverage of Oprah Winfrey stumping for Obama bordered on gushing.

In an online posting Monday, ABC reported that an Obama volunteer wearing a press pass asked the candidate a friendly question about tax policy at an Iowa event. But several of the assembled reporters huddled and concluded that it was not a story, one of them said. Clinton faced a storm of media criticism over a similar planted question.

Some reporters confess that they are enjoying Clinton's slippage, if only because it enlivens what had become a predictable narrative of her cruising to victory. The prospect of a newcomer knocking off a former first lady is one heck of a story.

Halperin, who surveys political news at Time.com's the Page, says: "Your typical reporter has a thinly disguised preference that Barack Obama be the nominee. The narrative of him beating her is better than her beating him, in part because she's a Clinton and in part because he's a young African American. . . . There's no one rooting for her to come back."

Sometimes the Clinton complaints go too far. In the PBS interview last week, Bill Clinton challenged the media's ridicule of his wife for pointing out that Obama had written a kindergarten essay saying he wanted to be president one day. It was just a joke, the former president contended, and Obama's camp "got a few stenographers to write stories as if this kindergarten letter was serious," he said. In fact, the kindergarten matter was included in a humorless release about Obama's longtime ambition, and Clinton aides have admitted it was a mistake.

Her campaign faces lingering resentment among many reporters over the lack of access to the candidate and the aggressive style of some of her operatives, who push back hard against stories they dislike. CNN correspondent Candy Crowley received a blistering e-mail merely for asking questions about reports that the former president was unhappy with the campaign's direction.

When Obama was languishing in the polls for months, the media tended to fault him for not being aggressive enough against Clinton, rather than for specific positions or comments.

"The problem here may be that Obama remains reluctant to really go after Hillary's character -- to portray her as unethical and dishonest on some fundamental level," the New Republic's Michael Crowley wrote. Fineman suggested that Obama "attack more in sorrow than in anger" and "argue that Clinton is too polarizing, that she cannot win a general election."

Some accounts have questioned Obama's record but were not widely picked up by other news organizations, despite a full-court press by the Clinton camp. Politico questioned whether Obama might be too liberal for a general election, noting a 1996 questionnaire in which he opposed the death penalty and backed a ban on the manufacture and possession of handguns. The Capitol Hill newspaper also reported that after reporters questioned Obama's declaration that lobbyists "won't work in my White House," he softened his stance at the next campaign stop, saying lobbyists "are not going to dominate my White House."

Clinton benefits greatly from her global celebrity and the novelty of a president's wife trying to win the office he had held. She can command attention at a moment's notice, such as when all six network and cable morning shows jumped at the chance to interview her Monday, just as the five Sunday shows did in September. But the withering spotlight can also lead to the spread of distortions, such as an erroneous radio report that she and her party had eaten at an Iowa diner without leaving a tip.

At an appearance Monday in suburban Johnston, where she was lauded by old friends and people she had helped, Clinton seemed to signal a degree of frustration with her media image.

"I want you to have some flavor of who I am, outside of the television cameras," she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/18/AR2007121802184.html?referrer=emailarticlepg

ABC News Interview with Hillary Clinton

Hillary should play her gender card to the hilt

Hillary should play her gender card to the hilt
BY ROBIN GERBER | Robin Gerber is senior faculty with the Gallup Organization and author of "Leadership the Eleanor

Sen. Hillary Clinton has a trust problem. Polls in Iowa and New Hampshire show that voters give her very low marks for being trustworthy and honest. The media and her opponents have built and reinforced the charge.

But they're blaming the victim. Clinton is running for president in a sexist culture that persists in seeing strong, capable women as suspect.

It's not that voters and her opponents think Clinton's experienced and competent, and they don't like or trust her. It's that they think she's experienced and competent and that's why they don't like or trust her.

A study earlier this year by Catalyst, a nonprofit business research organization, showed the stark dilemma that competent women face. In "The Double-bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership," women were criticized for being "too aggressive and self-promoting," but men with similar styles were praised for being direct.

Women were forced to choose between competence and being liked and trusted by their colleagues, but leaders must have both to succeed. Stereotyed expectations about leadership styles led to conclusions that men were being assertive in the same situation where women were viewed as abrasive.

As the study concluded, "These perceptions not only influence whether people respect women's styles of leadership, but also the extent to which women leaders are perceived as trustworthy."

Clinton's two main rivals for the nomination, Sens. John Edwards and Barack Obama, are exploiting her double-bind. They realize that she's secured her position as an experienced, accomplished politician. That's why they've taken to accusing her of being dishonest. Edwards put it most baldly, at one debate saying, "The American people ... deserve a president of the United States that they know will tell them the truth."

Is there evidence proving that Hillary Clinton can't be trusted? To quote one of the great presidential debate responses: "No."

Take the example of abortion rights, where Clinton was accused of changing her position to match a shift in the political wind. The attack started in July 2006, when she said abortion should be "safe, legal and rare," and was immediately pilloried in the media for abandoning her pro-choice stance. But she'd used those same words seven years earlier in a speech as first lady. Clinton is a strong defender of abortion rights and also hopes unwanted pregnancies can be avoided. Where's the dishonesty in that?

Clinton's vote on the 2002 resolution authorizing the president to use force in Iraq has raised the loudest cries about trusting her. Obama's been relentless in construing her vote as a blank check for war, and portraying her as dissembling when she disagrees. As proof of her perfidy, Clinton was accused of failing to make any effort before the invasion of Iraq to influence the president's policy.

In fact, she repeatedly pressed the case for weapons inspections in Iraq, and against President George W. Bush's acting precipitously. She said she believed that Bush would live up to his statements about using UN inspectors, and that Bush "took the authority that others and I gave him and he misused it." While it's fair to disagree with her approach, there's no fairness in the claim that her actions on Iraq prove her untrustworthy.

As a presidential candidate, Clinton has held her know-how and experience up like a battle flag. But along with competence goes the ambition, assertiveness, even aggressiveness that she and other leaders bring to the tough job of leadership. And there's the rub. Dominance, authority and ambition are widely viewed as essential leadership characteristics - as long as you're a man. When Clinton displays this "masculine" style, she loses the public trust.

What's a woman running for president to do? Pull the gender card out of the deck and hold it up high. Most people are unaware of their bias or don't want to recognize or acknowledge it.

Clinton needs to challenge her opponents and voters with a simple test: Substitute "Henry" for "Hillary" and reassess his/her strengths and weaknesses. They may be surprised to find that the smart, competent, assertive, aggressive, ambitious "Henry" Clinton running for president seems like a very trustworthy man.

Robin Gerber is senior faculty with the Gallup Organization and author of "Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way" and the forthcoming novel "Eleanor vs. Ike."

AP: Clinton Cranks Up Rhetoric Against Obama

Clinton Cranks Up Rhetoric Against Obama

By TOM RAUM
Associated Press Writer

CLEAR LAKE, Iowa (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested Monday that Barack Obama has too little experience and perhaps too much ambition, pressing an increasingly aggressive campaign against her chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Both candidates were in Iowa, one month before the nation's leadoff caucuses with new polls showing Obama had whittled away her early lead and they were virtually tied among Democrats in the state.

"So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on day one ... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate," Clinton said.

For the second day in a row, the New York senator and former first lady turned up the heat in her race with the Illinois senator.

Her rhetoric - and countercharges from Obama - underscored the tightness of a race in which polls show a dead heat between them, with former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina also in strong contention. Many Iowa caucus goers say they still haven't made up their minds or could yet change them.

Clinton accused Obama of a "rush to campaign" in not returning to Washington this fall to vote on a resolution naming an Iranian military unit a terrorist organization. The Bush administration supported the measure, as did Clinton - and Obama has criticized her for it.

"Presidents can't dodge the tough political fights," she said.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton retorted, "The truth is, Barack Obama doesn't need lectures in political courage from someone who followed George Bush to war in Iraq, gave him the benefit of the doubt on Iran, supported NAFTA and opposed ethanol until she decided to run for president."

A new AP-Pew poll showed Clinton essentially tied with Obama in Iowa, 31 percent to 26 percent, with Edwards at 19 percent and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson at 10 percent.

Clinton's campaign events on Monday were all based encouraging voters to go to the Jan. 3 caucuses - and to bring a buddy.

She held a campaign event at the Surf Ballroom at Clear Lake, the same hall where three Rock 'n' Roll legends performed before their death in a plane crash in February 1959.

"I am old enough to remember Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper," Clinton told her audience. She said she felt like hearing Valens' "La Bamba."

She was late for the Clear Lake event after a campaign plane carrying reporters ahead of her remained on the runway after landing when the cabin began filling with smoke. The plane had to be towed off the runway before Clinton's plane could land. The source of the smoke was not immediately apparent, the pilot and campaign aides said.

"We were circling and circling and circling," Clinton said.

She pledged to be "a president who wakes up every morning ready to fight for our families ... and the causes we believe in. It's what I've been doing for 35 years."

While her husband Bill was president, she said, "we created" millions of new jobs during the 1990s.

The Iowa caucuses are Jan. 3, and New Hampshire votes Jan. 8. Several other states quickly follow, culminating in races on Feb. 5 when two dozen states hold contests.

Clinton is fighting to nurture a sense of inevitability and to stop Obama or Edwards from undercutting it with an Iowa victory.

Clinton assailed the Illinois senator on Sunday for a political action committee he controls that has contributed money to elected officials in early voting states. Obama has brushed off the criticism.

Politico: Obama warned drive could offend Iowans

The campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is drawing some local skepticism for a drive to recruit non-Iowans to caucus at their Iowa colleges.

“If you are not from Iowa, you can come back for the Iowa caucus and caucus in your college neighborhood,” says a four-page “Students for Barack Obama” brochure provided to Politico.

David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register, the state’s leading political commentator, wrote in a blog post called “The Illinois Caucus” that the effort to increase participation by out-of-staters “risks offending long-time Iowa residents.”

“Given that lots of students in Iowa’s colleges and universities are from Obama’s neighboring home state of Illinois, the effort could net him thousands of additional votes on caucus night,” Yespen wrote.

The Obama campaign contends that it’s doing nothing unusual — that Iowa college students have long caucused near their colleges. And a separate Reigster news article quoted Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro as saying of the Obama instructions: “I think it's playing within the rules.”

A Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign official said: “We are not courting out-of-staters. The Iowa caucus ought to be for Iowans.”

Chris Dodd for President Iowa State Director Julie Andreeff Jensen said in a statement on Saturday:

“I was deeply disappointed to read today about the Obama campaign's attempt to recruit thousands of out-of-state residents to come to Iowa for the caucuses. ... ‘New Politics’ shouldn't be about scheming to evade either the spirit or the letter of the rules that guide the process. That may be the way politics is played in Chicago, but not in Iowa."

The instruction is part of an Obama campaign effort to counteract a potentially serious blow to youth support for his campaign: The Jan. 3 caucus date means colleges will still be on holiday break.

Many Democrats theorize that college students are more likely to vote heavily for Obama if they go as organized college groups rather than hit or miss as individuals, scattered at their folks’ caucuses all over Iowa.

“If you are from Iowa,” the brochure says, “you will probably be home for the caucus and will caucus in your hometown.” The brochure gives instructions about where to call or go online for information about where to caucus.

Yepsen wrote that the out-of-state college students’ participation would be legal, but said he isn’t certain “whether it’s fair, or politically smart.”

“No presidential campaign in memory has ever made such a large, open attempt to encourage students from out of state, many of whom pay out-of-state tuition, to participate in the caucuses.,” he said. “No other campaign appears to be doing it in this campaign cycle.”

The student section of BarackObama.com has a “Rock the Caucus” section designed to make it as easy as possible for collegiate supporters of Obama to turn out.

“Join the Facebook group to learn more,” the site says. “If you are 17 years old — you can still caucus! Just as long as you are 18 by Nov. 4, 2008. You do not have to register beforehand — just show up at the caucus. ... We at the Obama campaign have plenty of resources for students out, especially if it is your first time caucusing!”

The question of who can participate was already sticky. In early November, Dodd’s campaign staff asked the campaigns to pledge that their out-of-state staff and volunteers would not attempt to caucus. Most of the campaigns signed the pledge.

The Clinton official said: “We have a policy that if you move to Iowa for the express purpose of working on the campaign, you can not caucus.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7125.html

Politico: Clinton seizes opportunity after crisis

Friday afternoon began with possible tragedy: A hostage crisis at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire.

As the incident unfolded Clinton’s campaign closed its doors and canceled her public appearances.

But nightfall brought a happy ending: the campaign workers safe, the man in police custody — and Clinton flying to the scene to express thanks.

The hostage-taking itself offered a rare, if small, genuine drama in a campaign season governed by strict schedules and scripted stump speeches.

And as soon as it ended, Clinton took full advantage of the opportunity she had unexpectedly been handed.

In her New Hampshire press conference, she stood before a column of police in green and tan uniforms. She talked of meeting with hostages. She mentioned that she spoke to the state’s governor about eight minutes after the incident began.

The scene was one of a woman in charge.

“It looked and sounded presidential,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “This was an instance of the White House experience of this campaign. They knew how to handle this.”

That the crisis was outside Clinton's control gave it a rare quality in this era of hyper-controlled politicking, Sabato added.

“What’s most important about it is that it’s not contrived. It’s a real event and that distinguishes it from 99 percent of what happens in the campaign season.”

Clinton’s campaign has long been dogged by key questions: is she authentic, does she genuinely have the experience to be president, and is the country ready for a woman as commander in chief — especially during wartime.

“She has never run anything. And the idea that she could learn to be president as an internship just doesn’t make any sense,” former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, said in one campaign ad.

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has argued the same line.

“I don’t know Hillary’s experience,” Giuliani has said. “She’s never run a city, she's never run a state. She’s never run a business. She has never met a payroll. She has never been responsible for the safety and security of millions of people, much less even hundreds of people.”

Looking the part

Friday presented Clinton with a moment to look the part of president.

“You had one of these breaking news stories ... and so everybody was glued to the set,” said Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “She got on TV and provided a sense of closure and executive cool. It is like how Giuliani used television during his crisis.

“There was a sense that this was a dress rehearsal of how she was going to deal with... crisis as president,” Thompson added.

In her two public appearances after the hostages were freed, she was stern, but she also spoke of the concerns she felt as a mother, admitting to a “horrible sense of bewilderment” and “outrage.”

Her decision to express her personal anxieties offered a window into how she may veer into territory men avoid — personal feelings during a possible public tragedy.

Clinton heads the largest and most manicured of all operations. Her campaign has an especially organized staff that surrounds her. She stays on script and she stays on schedule.

Even as she flew to New Hampshire Friday evening, she was planning to return to Iowa Saturday in order to return to schedule.

What the hostage incident offered Clinton was a brief reprieve from the petty narrative of her versus Sen. Barack Obama, a break from what at times has devolved to intra-party bickering.

“Voters look for opportunities to see how candidates react in crisis,” Sabato said. “And this was a mini crisis.”