In Iowa, candidates find positives in going negative

Obama declared his intention to get tough with Clinton, but Edwards went further, casting her as a captive of special interests. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

DES MOINES - The Iowa presidential caucuses are supposed to represent the triumph of face-to-face campaigning over attack ads and candidate posturing on televised debates.

"You like to open the hood and kick the tires, then take each of us out for a test drive," Illinois Senator Barack Obama told Iowans in small towns and cities this week, paying tribute to the special vigilance of voters here. For the New Year's holiday, candidates are trying new ways to reach voters in person, from a giant party in Des Moines hosted by Bill and Hillary Clinton to a series of Mitt Romney "huddles" with voters watching college football games on television.

But polls in Iowa, while constantly subject to change, suggest that negative attacks and television advertising continue to drive big movements by the candidates, despite all the time they spend on the hustings.

In both the Democratic and Republican races, candidates have dipped in the polls whenever opponents have attacked them - giving new force to the political adage that negative campaigning, while distasteful to voters, is the most effective tool in the electoral playbook.

New York Senator Clinton was riding high in the Democratic polls through the summer and early fall, until her two top challengers - Obama and former North Carolina senator John Edwards - began pounding away at her vote to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and her flip-flop over whether to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Obama declared his intention to get tough with Clinton in a New York Times interview, but Edwards went even further, casting her as a captive of special interests.

Clinton's poll numbers dipped, and Obama had assumed first place in most polls by early this month. Then Clinton sought to make an issue of the fact that Obama's health plan did not require middle-class people to buy insurance, and AFSCME, an influential labor union that is backing Clinton, ran radio ads declaring that Obama just wasn't serious about universal health coverage.

Meanwhile, under the radar, radio commentators and a right-wing Christian newspaper spread falsehoods that Obama is secretly a Muslim. (He is a member of the United Church of Christ in Chicago.)

The attacks seem to have worked: In the latest round of polling, Obama is now locked in a tight three-way race with Clinton and Edwards, who appears to have benefited from time out of the spotlight - and out of range from attacks - for several months while his poll numbers were low. Edwards believes he has the momentum to win the caucuses. If he does, Iowans who chose him may be left to ponder whether they were drawn to his fiery populist message, or to the fact that he was the least sullied of the Democrats' Big Three.

Negative campaigning has also defined the Republican race. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, spent heavily to build a strong organization in Iowa and outhustled the rest of the GOP field in campaigning. He was atop the polls for most of the summer and fall until one of his rivals, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, began challenging him relentlessly in debates and on the campaign trail. Romney and Giuliani each contended the other was soft on illegal immigration and too much of a spendthrift, among many other disputes. The feuding helped sink both candidates.

By November, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee had emerged as the new Iowa front-runner, buoyed in part by his sunny demeanor and positive message.

Romney used his enormous financial advantage to launch a major TV ad campaign drawing attention to the 1,033 pardons and commutations Huckabee granted to convicts during his nearly 10 years in office. Soon after, Huckabee began dropping in the polls and is now in a close race with Romney.

One of the two seems destined to win; two other major GOP candidates, Giuliani and Senator John McCain of Arizona, have stopped campaigning in Iowa. Another, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson, has risen slightly in some polls but still lags.

Yesterday, Huckabee called a press conference to announce that he had filmed his own attack ad against Romney's record - but wasn't going to run it, believing that the public deserved a more positive campaign.

But he showed the ad to the media, just in case any reporters wanted to see all the dirt he'd uncovered.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.