Clinton surrogates throw the jabs
GRUNDY CENTER, Iowa - Hillary Clinton's campaign is exhibiting signs of a split personality.
Touring Iowa this week, she has criticized Barack Obama only implicitly as she focused on showing a softer picture of herself as a loyal friend and tireless public servant, tearful old friends and grateful constituents by her side.
At the same time, her surrogates and supporters have been increasingly busy sharpening their knives for Obama.
The latest examples: A major union backing Clinton is mailing fliers in Iowa that attack Obama's healthcare plan, but never mention Clinton's name. It quotes John Edwards instead, prompting his campaign to cry foul yesterday. "There have been a lot of misleading tactics and tricks in the last few weeks, but we've just never seen anything like this before," Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, Iowa director for Edwards, said in a statement.
And yesterday, after the
"We are learning more and more that he took what a lot of us in public life call the easy way out on controversial votes," said Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York.
Trying to stay above the fray while dispatching surrogates to play the bad cop is a time-tested political strategy. But it is especially striking in the Clinton campaign now because the sharp jabs are such a contrast from the candidate's warm and fuzzy message.
It also suggests that the Clinton campaign may have concluded that it was a mistake for the US senator from New York to have gone on the offensive herself in recent weeks. In early December, Clinton criticized Obama's healthcare plan and the "present" votes and declared, "Now the fun part starts. We're into the last month, and we're going to start drawing the contrasts."
After that remark drew derision from the blogosphere and some voters, she seemed to pull back.
But meanwhile, her New Hampshire campaign co-chairman, Bill Shaheen told a reporter that Obama's acknowledged use of marijuana and cocaine in his youth would open the door for Republican attacks and questions of whether he ever sold drugs. After the uproar last week, Shaheen resigned and Clinton disavowed his remarks.
But then her chief strategist, Mark Penn, twice uttered the word "cocaine" during a television interview on the episode.
On Wednesday, former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, who endorsed Clinton this week, apologized to Obama for what was ostensibly a compliment - telling a reporter that the Illinois senator would be able to reach out to the world's Muslims because he has Muslim ancestry. But Obama is Christian and has been subject to false attacks that suggest he is a radical Muslim.
Bill Clinton also gave a surprisingly stern critique of Obama on PBS last week, seeming to compare him with a "gifted television commentator" and asking, "When is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?"
Even though Hillary Clinton has shied lately from speaking directly about Obama, the contrast between the two of them is a constant subtext. And yesterday she said it is "not smart" for a president to meet personally with the president of Iran without conditions, something Obama has said he would do.
"It's tempting any time things seem quieter for a minute on the international front to think that we don't need a president who's up to speed on foreign affairs and military matters," she said at an event where three military leaders and a diplomat vouched for her foreign policy credentials. "Well, that's the kind of logic that got us George Bush in the first place."
That prompted this reply from Obama spokesman Bill Burton: "While Senator Clinton takes a break from her 'likability tour' to go back on the attack, Senator Obama, the only major candidate who opposed both the Iraq war and the rush to war in Iran, will continue to demonstrate why he has the judgment to turn the page on the Bush-Cheney foreign policy."
Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@ globe.com. 