In Democratic slugfest, Clinton goes overboard

WHEN Democrats debated last week in Las Vegas, it was a love-fest.

When they squared off Monday night in Myrtle Beach, it was a slugfest unlike anything we've seen so far in this campaign.

Both Barack Obama and John Edwards conducted themselves well, while Hillary Clinton too often crossed the line into dubious or unfair charges.

There's a difference between distinctions that seem legitimate and those that appear cheap, and too many of Clinton's fell into the latter category.

It's perfectly legitimate, for example, for Clinton to point out that her healthcare program is bolder than the one Obama has put forward, because hers includes an individual mandate, while his does not.

Other things felt contrived, however - and it's easy to see why Obama is starting to take it personally.

The Clinton strategy seems to be to scuff Obama up on what have been his strong points.

One obvious line of attack is that Obama is someone who regularly shifts his stands. She tried that several times, claiming that as soon as her rival is confronted on something, "he says that's not what he meant," and later asserting that "it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you because you never take responsibility for any vote. . ."

The notion that Obama is hard to pin down is something Clinton has bruited about before, but actually he's usually been willing to say where he stands. Indeed, one of the tenets of his campaign has been that Democrats should say what they really think and make the case for that position, rather than play tactical politics.

Or take the exchange over Obama's recent remarks about Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party, which included Obama's comment that "I think it's fair to say the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10, 15 years, in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom."

Bill Clinton has made it sound as though Obama was praising the Republicans and saying that, as the former president has put it, "since 1992, the Republicans have had all the good ideas." In the debate, Hillary contended that Obama had said "that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years."

Obama's willingness to concede that Republicans have had any ideas at all may have been politically unwise in a campaign context, but the notion that he was lavishing praise on those ideas simply isn't accurate. His obvious intention, as the transcript of his remarks makes clear, was to assert that a party that had once offered new ideas and alternatives was now recycling stale nostrums.

When Obama insisted he hadn't said the Republican ideas were good ones, Hillary Clinton was left to argue that that was the way his remarks had come across. Perhaps to a rival determined to put the worst possible political spin on them - but that doesn't make it true.

Another area where Clinton is clearly trying to muddy the differences is on the Iraq war. Faced with her unpopular vote for the Iraq war resolution, Clinton's camp is arguing that despite Obama's stated opposition to the war at the time, he hasn't been consistent in that opposition. That means downplaying Obama's October 2002 speech opposing the war - or treating it as an isolated event, as Clinton did Monday night - and taking several of his subsequent comments out of context.

All in all, that's a dubious argument - and the Clintons' willingness to make it adds to my sense that fair play has taken a backseat to political gamesmanship.

As part of her attempt to paint him as equivocal, Clinton also revisited her rival's "present" votes during his days in the Illinois Legislature. It's hard to know the circumstances behind each of those votes. But in a recent campaign-arranged conference call, Illinois abortion-rights leaders made a persuasive case that Obama hadn't been trying to duck on that contentious matter; rather, they said, he was participating in a voting strategy designed by the abortion-rights community.

So here's my overall take.

Edwards was passionate and effective, drawing distinctions that were usually fair and legitimate. Obama, showing flashes of real annoyance with Clinton's attacks, defended himself reasonably well.

Hillary Clinton went overboard - and in the end, she left me grimacing.

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.