Dukakis says Obama not capitalizing on grass roots

Michael Dukakis, a former Massachusetts governor, says he's "baffled" why Barack Obama's campaign has not turned his grass-roots following into a more powerful ground organization.

Dukakis, who has not endorsed anyone in the Democratic presidential race, said Wednesday night at Emerson College that Obama has not yet tapped the power of the crowds that turn out to hear him speak and has not capitalized on the hundreds of thousands of Internet contributions he's received.

He said his wife, Kitty, an Obama supporter and contributor, routinely gets e-mails from the campaign asking her to donate more money, but the e-mails never ask her to volunteer to run a precinct for the campaign.

A student involved in the Obama campaign countered that the campaign signed up many volunteers at Obama's last rally in Boston and that busloads of Massachusetts supporters were traveling to New Hampshire.

Dukakis shook his head impatiently. The campaign has to be run from the neighborhood, he said, with New Hampshire people canvassing in New Hampshire and Massachusetts people canvassing their own blocks.

"This state is going to be important," he added, noting that Massachusetts has moved its primary up to Feb. 5. "They should be working here."

LISA WANGSNESS

In some eyes, Barack Obama's speech to Iowa Democrats last month was one of the presidential campaign's most compelling moments so far.

Now, he's using parts of that address in a TV ad airing in Iowa that showcases his appeal to all voters and that takes not-so-subtle digs at rival Hillary Clinton.

The 60-second spot shows him on stage - as audience members listen and laudatory media comments are superimposed on the screen - as he delivers the rhetorical high point of the address.

"We are in a defining moment in our history," he says. "Our nation is at war. The planet is in peril. The dream that so many generations fought for feels as if it's slowly slipping away.

"And that is why the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won't do," he says, an apparent reference to Clinton.

"That's why telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won't do. America, our moment is now. I don't want to spend the next year, or the next four years, refighting the same fights we had in the 1990s," Obama says in another dig at Clinton, who was married to the president during that period and has often alleged a right-wing conspiracy against her and her husband.

FOON RHEE

LAS VEGAS - The one-time other woman in Hillary Clinton's life says she's considering casting her vote for the senator.

"I can't help but want to support my own gender, and she's as experienced as any of the others - except maybe Joe Biden," Gennifer Flowers said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Las Vegas. "I would love to see a woman president, I just didn't think it would be her."

During the 1992 presidential race, the former television reporter said she had a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton, who was governor of Arkansas. Clinton initially denied the allegation, but later, during his deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case, acknowledged a single sexual encounter with Flowers.

Today the media frenzy and the book tour are behind her. The defamation suit she once filed against Hillary Clinton was dismissed. The 57-year-old lounge singer says she plans to stay far away from presidential politics.

"I don't have any interest whatsoever in getting back out there and bashing Hillary Clinton," Flowers said.

ASSOCIATED PRESS