As the Democratic primary race enters a new, critical phase, Senator Barack Obama's campaign is wrestling with how to respond forcefully to Hillary Clinton's recent attacks on his record without violating the positive, uplifting spirit at the core of his message.
Since Tuesday's defeats in the Ohio and Texas primaries, Obama's aides, frustrated that Clinton has been able to land a few blows, have tried to turn the tables, challenging her repeated contention that she has been "fully vetted" by calling on her to release her income tax returns, disclose contributors to Bill Clinton's presidential library, and make available the trove of documents from her years as the wife of a president.
"If she wants to make issues like ethics and disclosure and law firms and real estate deals and all that stuff issues - as I've said before, I don't know why they'd want to go there - but I guess that's where they'll take the race," Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, told reporters Tuesday night. "We're willing to draw dis tinctions that are honest and legitimate."
Then, on Wednesday, one of Obama's top supporters, former senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, told PBS's Jim Lehrer that Clinton is "flawed in many ways" and suggested that the Clintons' refusal to disclose donors to the former president's library in Little Rock, Ark. could obscure attempts by big contributors to buy special access to the highest levels of government.
But Obama's arsenal is limited by his insistence that his campaign not engage in below-the-belt attacks. Asked by reporters Tuesday how far he was willing to go, Obama said he would not "change the tone of our campaign" or "do things that I'm not comfortable with.
"Just remember," he said. "What we've been doing has worked."
That is partly true - Obama, despite losing three of four primaries Tuesday, still leads Clinton in the race for delegates. But Clinton, believing that her fusillade against Obama on trade and national security contributed to her campaign-saving wins in Ohio and Texas, has gained a head of steam and shows no signs of letting up. And Obama acknowledges her attacks on him have worked.
This dilemma of whether to hit Clinton harder and how is a new one for Obama, who has not faced this level of scrutiny before in his political career and often says he is committed to a new kind of politics that is "not based on tearing each other down, but on lifting the country up."
"He has to find a way to do it," said Steve McMahon, a Democratic strategist who worked for Howard Dean in 2004, pointing to Obama's past criticisms of Clinton's healthcare plan as an example of a "tough but fair" line of attack.
Obama and his aides have been inundated in recent days by news stories about his ties to indicted Chicago developer Tony Rezko, the campaign's handling of an ill-timed conversation about the North American Free Trade Agreement between an adviser and the Canadian government, and Clinton's sharp TV ad in Texas questioning his fitness to be commander in chief.
In response, the campaign has begun to shift from defense to offense.
On Wednesday, his campaign released a memo with the subject "TAX RETURNS: What does Clinton have to hide?" "The truth is, more than a year into this campaign, some very simple vetting of Hillary Clinton has yet to start," it read. (Clinton aides have pledged to release her returns before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.)
Bradley, speaking about the presidential library contributors, asked: "Are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions? And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted, investigations that are squelched, contracts that are awarded, regulations that are delayed."
He continued: "These are important questions. The people deserve to know. And we deserve, as Democrats, to know before a nominee is selected, because we don't want things to explode in a general election against John McCain."
Obama's campaign has also begun running a radio ad in Mississippi attacking Clinton for "derogatory" comments she made about the state last fall. "I was shocked when I learned Iowa and Mississippi have never elected a woman governor, senator, or member of Congress," Clinton was quoted as saying in October by The Des Moines Register. "How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi? That's not the quality, that's not the communitarianism, that's not the openness I see in Iowa."
Clinton's campaign asserts that Obama's fresh assaults are evidence that he cannot sell his campaign to voters, and her aides deride Obama's tactics as straight out of the GOP toolbox - even likening Obama's campaign to the special prosecutor who led the federal investigations of Bill Clinton.
In a memo yesterday, the Clinton campaign argued that Obama "lost Ohio and Texas because voters had doubts about his ability to serve as commander in chief and steward of the economy. But instead of addressing those concerns, how is Senator Obama responding? By attacking Senator Clinton."
The memo continued: "Apparently, the Obama campaign's idea of new politics is to recycle the same old Republican attacks on Senator Clinton that have failed for years. Imitating [former independent prosecutor] Ken Starr is not the way to win the Democratic nomination."
Some analysts say Obama ought to take a more aggressive tack. Dan Payne, a Boston-based Democratic strategist, said it would send the message to Clinton that she should be prepared to be on the defensive, too.
"Even if the substance of it doesn't move the voters, the fact that they're churning up the waters and making the Clintons answer those charges, it strikes me as worth doing," Payne said, noting that Clinton has already been forced to commit to releasing her tax documents.
But Ron Walters, who teaches politics at the University of Maryland, said Obama should focus on sharpening distinctions on policies and issues that resonate with voters.
"Going after her about tax returns and stuff like that, you know, that's OK, except that's not where the election is," said Walters, who was a top campaign aide to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. "He has rolled out this very powerful theme of change. He has the opportunity here now to be more meaty with respect to the issues and to juxtapose his approach to hers."
Obama's aides say they will actively draw new distinctions in the weeks ahead, including on foreign policy experience, which they say Clinton has cited as a major asset of hers without offering any evidence.
"There's a difference between drawing a contrast between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton and going negative," said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki. "There are questions that need to be asked of Senator Clinton and her campaign - about her tax returns, about her foreign policy experience - and we are more than ready to do that."
The situation is somewhat analogous to last year's Massachusetts gubernatorial race, in which Governor Deval Patrick, a friend and political kindred spirit to Obama, resisted pleas from Democratic leaders to attack after his Republican opponent, Kerry Healey, ran hard-hitting negative ads against him. Patrick later cast his victory as a repudiation from voters of such campaign tactics.
But Clinton's advisers believe their tougher line against Obama in Ohio and Texas did work, pointing to exit polls suggesting that late-deciding voters - about a fifth of the electorate in each state - broke for Clinton by wide margins.
And so, as the Democratic contest moves to Wyoming, which votes tomorrow, then Mississippi, which votes Tuesday, and on to Pennsylvania next month, a race many Democrats believe has already become too heated promises to get hotter.
Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.
