Obama emphasizes his ability to effect change in Iowa push
DES MOINES - Barack Obama, vying for Iowans' support a week before the caucuses, delivered a pointed message yesterday to his opponents for the Democratic nomination: Don't tell me what it takes to bring change.
In a freshened stump speech summing up his case for the presidency, Obama sought to counter two distinct arguments that his rivals have used against him in the run-up to next Thursday's vote.
John Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, says Obama lacks the toughness and the fight to truly change Washington. Senator Hillary Clinton of New York argues that Obama is merely hoping for change and not tested enough to see it through.
Obama, addressing several hundred supporters at a banquet hall in downtown Des Moines, offered a forceful rebuttal, saying he didn't "need any lectures about how to bring about change." The nomination battle, Obama said, will be about more than just the meaning of the word change. It will be, he said, about the meaning of hope.
"Some of my opponents appear scornful of the word. They think it speaks to naïveté, passivity, and wishful thinking," said the Illinois senator. "But that's not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task before us, or the roadblocks that stand in our path. . . . I know this will be hard. I know it. But I also know this: I know that hope has been the guiding force behind the most important changes this country has ever made."
Obama accused Clinton, although not by name, of having it both ways in trying to run as the experienced Washington hand while promising to usher in what she calls "a new beginning."
"You can't at once argue that you're the master of a broken system in Washington and then offer yourself as the person to change it," he said. "You can't fall in line behind the conventional thinking on issues as profound as war and then offer yourself as the leader who's best prepared to chart a new and better course for America."
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer responded yesterday in a statement: "Now is not the time for political attacks, it's time to pick a president who can give us a new beginning in a time of war and a troubled economy. . . . Iowans are going to pick the candidate best able to make the change we need starting on day one and that candidate is Hillary Clinton."
Clinton's campaign said she would air her "closing argument" in an unusual two-minute TV spot during 6 p.m. newscasts throughout Iowa on Wednesday, the night before the caucuses. Clinton plans to reinforce her case that she is the only leading Democrat with the experience to lead the country.
Edwards is scheduled to deliver an address today in which he will define "the type of change we need in this country," his campaign said. Aides released an excerpt that indicates he will continue his critique of what he calls Obama's "academic" approach.
"Compromise and conciliation is the academic theory of change. It just doesn't work in the real world," Edwards plans to say. "Fighting for conviction is the historic reality of change."
Obama said voters should not fall for Edwards's anger, nor for Clinton's combative rhetoric about Republicans.
"There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there," Obama said. "We don't need more heat. We need more light."
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com. 