It worked for Walter Mondale. Can it work for Hillary Clinton?
Trying to alter the dynamics of a primary race she is losing, Clinton ripped a page out of Mondale's 1984 campaign playbook yesterday by airing a new TV ad in Texas that suggests her younger, less experienced rival, Barack Obama, is not ready to be commander in chief.
"It's 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep," the ad's narrator says over images of boys and girls tucked and tranquil in their beds. "But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something's happening in the world. . . . Who do you want answering the phone?"
The spot is a direct descendant of former vice president Mondale's famous "Red Phone" ad against a less seasoned challenger, Senator Gary Hart. (Roy Spence, who made the Mondale ad, is now working for Clinton.)
The ad is part of Clinton's attempt over the past few days to reintroduce her Obama-as-risky argument, one she and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have plied on and off during the campaign - yet one that has not resonated broadly with voters to date.
But Clinton, whose last chance at the nomination may come Tuesday in critical contests in Ohio and Texas, believes she possesses the strongest claim to be the next commander in chief.
The New York senator's senior strategist, Mark Penn, told reporters yesterday that the ad reinforces voters' belief that Clinton is "ready to do the things that are necessary, ready to stand up to John McCain in a general election so that he wouldn't be able to use the national security card that the Republicans often use in those elections, and ready to defend, if necessary, the country by making the right decisions."
Obama quickly dismissed Clinton's new ad as a desperate ploy to exploit voters' worries.
"We've seen these ads before. They're the kind that play on people's fears to scare up votes," Obama said at a Houston American Legion post. "Well it won't work this time. Because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is what kind of judgment will you make when you answer?"
The Illinois senator continued, "We've had a 'red phone' moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer."
Within hours, Obama's campaign launched a television ad directly rebutting Clinton's spot.
It uses intentionally similar footage of a child sleeping, a similar phone ring as Clinton's, and similar language about a 3 a.m. call in the White House. The announcer concludes, "In a dangerous world, it's judgment that matters."
The Obama campaign also announced the endorsement of Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who cited Obama's early opposition to the Iraq war and who, like Clinton, voted in 2002 to authorize the war and has since expressed regret.
"The indisputable fact is Barack Obama was right about Iraq when many of us were wrong," Rockefeller said in a statement. "It was a tough call and the single greatest national security question, and mistake, of our time."
Clinton and her surrogates have repeatedly raised the specter of a middle-of-the-night world crisis in trying to raise doubts about Obama's fitness for the presidency and to dismiss the excitement his candidacy has generated as dangerously frivolous.
"We don't know what will happen," Clinton told hundreds of supporters Wednesday night in the eastern Ohio city of St. Clairsville. "That's why we have to think about this decision more like a hiring choice than a voting choice. You know, you can vote for somebody or against somebody for whatever reason you want."
The campaigns' volleys on national security could define the final stretch of campaigning before Tuesday, when 370 delegates are up for grabs in Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Aides to both candidates yesterday offered divergent views on what those votes will mean. Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby polls released yesterday indicated that Obama had a 48 percent-to-42 percent edge in Texas and was virtually tied with Clinton in Ohio.
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, told reporters that Obama holds a lead in pledged delegates - those won from caucuses and primaries - of 162. Plouffe cited past comments by Clinton advisers predicting that they would emerge from Tuesday with an overall delegate lead, which he said was now extremely unlikely given Obama's rise in the polls in delegate-rich Ohio and Texas and the proportional method Democrats use to apportion the delegates.
"They are going to fail on that measure, and fail miserably," Plouffe said.
Given Obama's lead heading into Tuesday, anything short of significant victories for Clinton in Ohio and Texas that close her delegate deficit may well bring calls for her to drop out and endorse Obama for the good of the party.
But Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, responded by asserting that Obama's financial advantage and his claim of the front-runner mantle means he should sweep Tuesday's votes, and he signaled that she intends to fight on, perhaps through Pennsylvania's primary on April 22.
"If he is unable to win all four states," Wolfson said, "it shows that Democrats are engaged in what some in the media have referred to as buyer's remorse - that there is an interest in having this campaign go on and go on to at least Pennsylvania and beyond."
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.
