By Sasha Issenberg, Globe Staff

CONCORD, NH -- Taking Tim Russert's lead, Barack Obama has begun using Bill Clinton's words against his wife.

Taking a folded piece of paper out of his pocket at a Saturday-morning rally at a public park here, Obama read the words of another presidential candidate: "'The same old experience isn't relevant. You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience.'"

"That candidate was Bill Clinton," he said.

But Obama didn't seem terribly nostalgic for the eight years that followed candidate Clinton's successful redefinition of "experience."

"You need someone who will tell the truth -- not be slick, not triangulate, not maneuver," Obama said later in the speech.

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick today called his predecessor, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, "shameless'' for criticizing a federally funded children's health care program while touting his own Massachusetts health care plan.

Like many Republicans, Romney opposes expanding the national SCHIP program to provide insurance to children in lower-income families. Congress has voted to expand the program, which is funded in part by the states, but President Bush is expected to veto it. Democrats and some moderate Republicans say the SCHIP program provides critical coverage to children in low-and moderate-income families, but conservative Republicans call the idea the first step toward socialized medicine.

But Patrick said SCHIP is a crucial element to expanding and maintaining coverage in Massachusetts, where Patrick estimated health care costs are likely to take up half the state budget within the next ten years.

"Without SCHIP, then health reform, which he;s been bragging about, fails. It's the same to me - the same behavior -- as signing the bill and vetoing the funding for it, which is what he did before he left office,'' Patrick said in an interview with Globe reporters and editors. He was referring to a tax provision of the Massachusetts health care plan Romney excised with a line-item veto.

"He's a nice fellow. But a shameless candidate,'' Patrick said of Romney.

Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said Patrick's "name-calling'' was "useless.''

"This is a disagreement over policy. Deval Patrick, like many liberal Democrats, unfortunately favors an expansion of government spending and government control over healthcare. That's bad policy,'' Madden said.

The SCHIP program, which is up for renewal this year, is meant to help needy families obtain health insurance for their children. The program is targeted at families earning twice the poverty level or less -- a little over $40,000 for a family of four -- but the law also allows states to apply to the federal government to cover more families. That provision is intended to help states where the cost of living is higher.

Massachusetts allows families earning three times the poverty level to obtain SCHIP coverage, providing help to 90,500 children in the state, according to statistics culled by the office of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts and an architect of the original program.

Some 112,000 children in Massachusetts currently have no insurance, Kennedy's office said. The bill approved by Congress and headed for a presidential veto would allow the Bay State to add 27,400 more children to the program over the next four years.

Opponents of expanding the program don't like the fact that it relies on an increase in the cigarette tax to pay for it; some Republicans believe Democrats will suffer at the polls for voting for a tax increase.

The House does not have enough votes to override a Bush veto, but Democrats have vowed to bring the bill up again and again -- putting some moderate Republicans in an awkward position as they head into their 2008 re-election campaigns.

"We will be back tomorrow, and the next day, and for however long it takes to see this bipartisan bill become law. The President has broken his promise to America’s children,'' Kennedy said.

It was only a matter of time before this happened: Bill Clinton has joined his wife and begun spinning the Barack Obama-lacks-experience narrative. The former president, in an interview with Bloomberg Television set to air this weekend, says that he was far more experienced as a 46-year-old in 1992 when he first won the White House. Obama is 46 now.

"There is a difference," Clinton says, according to Bloomberg. "I was the senior governor in America. I had been head of any number of national organizations that were related to the major issue of the day, which is how to restore America's economic strength.''

In the Bloomberg interview, Clinton compares Obama's level of experience today to his own in 1988, when he chose not to run for president. "I came within a day of announcing, because most of the governors were for me and I had been a governor for six years,'' he says. "And I really didn't think I knew enough and had served enough and done enough to run."

Bill Clinton has so far largely avoided being critical of his wife's opponents, saying that the candidates are good enough that voters didn't have to be "against" any of them. Does this signal a shift?

Obama spokesman Bill Burton responded by telling Bloomberg News that Obama has more than 20 years of "the experience America needs.'' "He can change the divisive politics of Washington because he's the one candidate who's spent his career bringing people of differing views together,'' Burton is quoted as saying.

By Sasha Issenberg

Is John Edwards running against Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama or the '04 version of himself?

"We don't need the world's next great politician as president," Edwards told a crowd packed into the community house in Littleton, New Hampshire, today when asked by a voter there to identify a trait that distinguished him from his rivals. " We need someone we can trust."

Of course, when Edwards ran for president four years ago, the campaign press corps all but welcomed him into the race with a "World's Next Great Politician" mug. When reporters weren't lauding his raw skills -- his ability to deliver a speech, his energy and charisma, which were all likened to Bill Clinton's -- they were often suggesting that Edwards's talents masked an underlying shallowness.

This year, the mug was transferred to Obama, and Edwards -- who aides say will use his decision to accept federal matching finds as a way to redefine himself as a scrappy underdog -- seems pleased to pass it off. For obvious reasons, Edwards is trying to define himself as far
as possible from anything Clintonian, including the superlatives that were once tossed his way. Now the last great "next great politician" is claiming that those skills are necessarily intertwined with venality.

"We're not looking for the most cunning, manipulative and artful politician," he said in Littleton. "Every day in the White House, the personal political interest of the president will come in conflict with the interests of America. You've got to have a president who will choose America over their personal interest."

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama talks with Howard University Chairwoman Emerita Dr. Floretta Dukes McKensie after delivering a convocation address and receiving an honorary law degree. (AP photo)

Barack Obama today welcomed first-year students to Howard University, the historically black college in Washington, urging them to continue the civil rights work their forebears have started.

Obama connected civil rights struggles of the present -- including the "Jena 6" case involving six black teenagers in Jena, La. -- with civil rights struggles of the past, like the integration of Little Rock Central High School a half-century ago. He used the biblical story of Moses and Joshua to make his point -- Moses led his people toward the Promised Land, but Joshua had to finish the job.

"Be strong and have courage in the face of injustice," Obama said, according to prepared remarks. "Be strong and have courage in the face of prejudice and hatred. Be strong and have courage in the face of joblessness and helplessness and hopelessness. Be strong and have courage, in the face of our doubts and fears, in the face of skepticism, in the face of cynicism, in the face of a mighty river."

Obama, who received an honorary Howard degree, used his speech to lay out civil rights policies he would pursue as president, including directing his Department of Justice to prosecute civil rights violations, employment discrimination, and hate crimes, as well as violations of voting rights; recruiting more public defenders through loan forgiveness; bringing the penalties for crack and cocaine into more appropriate alignment; and directing some non-violent drug offenders into rehab programs instead of jail. Read Obama's full plan here.

Last night, Obama spoke at a huge rally in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Who said New York was Hillary Clinton country? Watch the Obama campaign's video of his appearance here.

Two other pieces worth reading today: this story in The Washington Post about Obama hiring Moses Mercado, a former Dick Gephardt adviser and lobbyist, as a senior adviser; and this story in today's New York Times about a Kenyan parliamentary candidate trying to capitalize on his self-described ties to Obama.

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- It's not unusual to hear a presidential candidate speak passionately about the need to do better diplomacy, to make military action a last-ditch option, and talk with hostile or undemocratic nations.

It's a little less common to hear those words spoken by a Republican contender, as former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee did today.

In a well-received address at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Huckabee bemoaned the lack of dialogue and knowledge of foreign nations that he said has accelerated the foreign policy troubles the United States faces.

``We haven't had diplomatic relations with Iran for almost 30 years ... and a lot of good it's done,'' Huckabee said. In Iraq, the former governor noted, US officials were out of touch with what was happening on the ground, and were instead relying on flawed information from Iraqi exiles before making the historic decision to go to war. Instead, the United States needs to shore up its diplomatic efforts and intelligence-gathering, he said.

``Before we put boots on the ground in the future, we better have wing-tips there first,'' Huckabee said.

The GOP candidate did stick to the view of nearly all of his fellow Republican primary opponents in saying the United States should not yet leave Iraq, saying a departure now would cause ``chaos'' in the country.

But future military conflicts could be avoided, Huckabee said, if the United States encourages moderate Islamic forces and helps build health and educations systems in the Islamic and Arab world so impoverished young people will not be lured into terrorist organizations.

``If we don't do the right thing and make life better in the Islamic world, then terrorists will step in and do the wrong thing,'' Huckabee said.

Huckabee had harsh words for Pakistan, which he called ``the corporate headquarters'' of al-Qaeda. In an interview after his address, Huckabee said he would not close off the possibility of taking unilateral action against terrorist cells in Pakistan if it was necessary to protect the American people from al-Qaeda. Further, Huckabee said his administration would meet with rogue leaders to keep a dialogue going.

That issue has been a point of contentions between Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, with Obama pledging to be open to the possibility of such meetings, and Clinton saying she did not want to be used as a ``propaganda'' tool by troublesome foreign leaders.

It's ``bullheaded to say we're not going to have any conversations with these people,'' Huckabee said.

John Edwards reversed course today on accepting public money for his presidential campaign, becoming the first of the major Democratic candidates to make the move.

With the third quarter of fund-raising ending on Sunday, he insisted in an interview with CNN that he did not make the decision because he is short of cash.

Instead, he is trying to frame the move as his latest attempt to reduce the influence of special interests, following on his stand to not take donations from Washington lobbyists. He challenged his Democratic rivals -- front-runner Hillary Clinton in particular -- to join him in the public financing system.

"You can't buy your way to the Democratic nomination," Edwards campaign manager David Bonior said in a statement the campaign issued this afternoon. "This is the most expensive presidential campaign in history, by far. And the simple fact is that the influence of money in politics -- and the focus on raising money in this election – has gotten out of control. It's time to get back to focusing on the issues that matter to the American people. That's why John Edwards has decided to play by the rules that were designed to ensure fairness in the election process by capping his campaign spending and seeking public financing."

Still, in February, Edwards declared that he would not seek public money, saying that he expected that the other major contenders to raise unlimited private money and he had to do the same to be competitive.

As of June 30, Edwards had raised $23 million, but that was far behind Clinton's $63 million and Barack Obama's $59 million, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Under the public financing system, federal money will match up to $250 of an individual’s contributions. To become eligible, a candidate must raise more than $5,000 of matchable contributions in each of at least 20 states. In return, a candidate must also agree to: limit campaign spending for all primary elections; limit campaign spending in each state; and limit spending from personal funds to $50,000.

And the winner is....

"Ready for Action," created by Ryan Whitaker, a 23-year-old college student from Provo, Utah, was picked today by Mitt Romney's camp to be the first amateur-produced TV ad to be aired by a presidential campaign.

The 60-second spot shows Romney speaking with a montage of accompanying images and emphasizes the campaign's themes of strength, innovation, and experience. "I can't wait to get my hands on Washington," Romney says near the ad's close.

It will air once a day in five media markets in Iowa and New Hampshire in the week starting next Wednesday, the Romney campaign announced this afternoon. Romney will introduce it at a rally tomorrow.

There were 129 submissions, the nine finalists were unveiled Tuesday, and online voting ended at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. The campaign said Whitaker's ad was the clear favorite, getting 47 percent of the vote.

Except for one obviously homemade submission in which an entrant praised Romney's stewardship of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the finalists shared much in common -- in large measure because as part of the contest, entrants used 372 photos, 44 video clips, and 36 audio files provided by the campaign.

"Ryan's ad is the first, but it certainly won't be the last," Alex Castellanos, senior adviser and media strategist to Romney, said in a statement issued by the campaign. "This revolutionary use of user-generated content empowers our grassroots supporters and their efforts immeasurably strengthen our campaign."

Per the AP, Mitt Romney told a crowd in Long Beach, Calif. yesterday that his personal contributions to his own campaign -- $9 million so far -- mean he will be less beholden to special interests.

"I don't like the fact that money has such an impact on politics, but this to me is a reason I'm investing at least as much as everybody else — probably a little more," Romney said.

This explanation might have worked a bit better if Dutko Worldwide, a Washington-based lobbying firm, were not holding a fundraiser for him today, the AP story notes. On its website, the firm describes itself as consistently ranked among Fortune magazine's top 10 lobbying firms.

Ron Kaufman, the Massachusetts Republican National Committeeman and one of Romney's top advisers, is chairman of the firm's executive committee.

John Edwards, the first presidential hopeful to take part in a dialogue hosted by MTV and MySpace, used the opportunity today to unveil a 10-point agenda designed to appeal to young voters.

The agenda includes restoring American moral leadership on the world stage by ending the war in Iraq, addressing global warming, tackling the genocide in Darfur, and fighting poverty. The plan also calls for giving students more college aid, providing universal healthcare, raising the minimum wage, and fighting credit card debt and abuse.

"You hear all the time from political pundits that young people don't care about politics – but it’s a lie," Edwards said in a statement issued by his campaign. "Young people all over the country care about America and are engaged in bringing change to their communities."

Edwards was at the University of New Hampshire to answer questions submitted to Edwards's MySpace page and by websurfers on MTV and MySpace.

Besides all the questions about Iraq and Iran and Social Security, the Democrats also faced some more offbeat queries as presidential debates go.

During the 30-second lightning round at Dartmouth College, moderator Tim Russert of NBC News asked the candidates about their favorite Bible verse.

And Alison King of NECN, warning them that it might be their most important answer of the night, asked whether they would support the Red Sox or Yankees.

For those of you who didn't stay awake to the bitter end Wednesday night, here's a quick rundown:

• Joe Biden: Christ's warning about the Pharisees from the gospel according to John; Yankees.
  
• Hillary Clinton: The golden rule from the gospel according to Luke; Yankees.
  
• Chris Dodd: The parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke; Sox.
  
• John Edwards: Christ's admonition to help the least among us from the gospel according to Matthew; Sox.
  
• Mike Gravel: Love as the most important value, apparently from Paul's letter to the Corinthians; Sox.
  
• Dennis Kucinich: St. Francis's prayer to make us instruments of peace; Cleveland Indians.
  
• Barack Obama: Sermon on the Mount from the gospel according to Matthew; White Sox.
  
• Bill Richardson: Sermon on the Mount from Matthew; Sox.
  

By Sasha Issenberg, Globe Staff

When a Republican National Committee "research briefing" came out earlier this week titled "Razzle Dazzle: Chicago Star Obama Continues His All Show, No Substance Campaign With Event On Broadway," some cried racism. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo cited the RNC's claim that Obama was "intellectually lazy" as an "allusion to generations of stereotypes
about black men."

When a charge of intellectual laziness is lodged against a black man who is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law and former member of the University of Chicago faculty, it may not only be racially allusive but evidence of an odd lack of confidence in the institutions of American meritocracy. But buried beneath is a suggestion of a new line of Republican attack against Obama: that he is from Chicago.

Obama has been generally masterful at introducing himself to the country as a man from Illinois, with a halo of Midwestern common sense. Chicago, where Obama relocated after law school and represented a state senate district on the city's South Side, carries different connotations in the American mind -- big-city corruption, big-city crime, big-city identity politics -- that, too, carry racial associations of their own. Ronald Reagan was fond of citing a fictitious "Chicago welfare queen" when he wanted to paint a picture of lazy, urban entitlement. In the vernacular of Democratic primary politics, Illinois is Paul Simon and Chicago is Jesse Jackson.

One of Obama's greatest coups in the campaign came in eschewing the habit of announcing a candidacy from one's hometown and instead doing it in the city where he built his political career -- Springfield, the downstate capital of Illinois, a landscape that suggested the placeless prairie moderation Obama has tried to make his defining characteristic in the campaign.

The RNC, in embracing a code word that would tag Obama as just another big-city black pol, may have signaled that it would prefer to remind general-election voters of the head-fake non-announcement of candidacy Obama pulled off two months before the Springfield speech.

Last December, to kick off an installment of "Monday Night Football," Obama put on a Bears hat and, looking straight into the camera, laughed. By next November, Obama may wish he had stocked up on Fighting Illini merchandise instead.

John McCain, whose campaign appears to be resurging, announced this morning that he will put up his first TV ads in New Hampshire starting this weekend.

A 30-second TV spot, titled "Live Free," praises McCain's judgment and trust and promises that he will restore trust in the federal government. "New Hampshire, you know who he is," the narrator says, reminding viewers that McCain won the first-in-the-nation primary in 2000.

A 60-second TV ad, titled "One Man," shows an extended clip of McCain being interviewed in a hospital bed as a prisoner-of-war after his Navy plane was shot down over North Vietnam. The narrator says "one man" sacrificed for his nation, a not-so-veiled reference to the fact that none of his main rivals served in the military.

And a 60-second radio spot, titled "Courage," also includes the POW interview and says McCain will be a leader, not a follower.

The ads follow up on a speech this morning to the conservative Hudson Institute in New York, where he suggested that rivals Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, lack the foreign policy experience to be commander-in-chief.

The Arizona senator argued that the next president needs "tested experience, political courage and strategic clarity to make sound and difficult decisions," according to the Associated Press. "Tough talk or managerial successes in the private sector aren't adequate assurance that their authors have the experience or qualities necessary for such a singular responsibility," he said.

In a conference call with reporters, campaign manager Rick Davis said while McCain does not try to elevate military service over other ways to serve the country, McCain's military service is "an obvious contrast" and the knowledge and experience he gained would be invaluable to a president in "the time of crisis and time of war we exist in now."

"I do think people's credentials are going to be debated in this election, and this is a very important one in this time of war," Davis said.

McCain, whose campaign went through staff and financial wobbles earlier this year, is trying to capitalize on a burst of momentum, tied in large measure to his support for the so-called surge of US troops in Iraq. This month, he took his "No Surrender" bus tour to Iowa and New Hampshire.

In the latest New Hampshire poll, McCain rose to 17 percent support among likely GOP primary voters, up from 12 percent in July. That puts him within striking distance of the leaders, Romney with 23 percent and Giuliani with 22 percent, according to the CNN/WMUR survey released Wednesday.

"We think this is significant because of the campaign John McCain has waged there recently," Davis said of the poll.

Campaign officials said that the ads will air statewide for at least the next two weeks and are designed to remind voters of heroic McCain's life story and to lock in the progress McCain seems to be making.

McCain also plans to be in New Hampshire this weekend for several events.

The pundocracy is dissecting the Democratic debate Wednesday night and something of a consensus is emerging.

John Edwards, by pointedly and directly drawing differences with front-runner Hillary Clinton, boosted his prospects to be the liberal alternative to the former first lady.

Barack Obama, by passing up another chance to go after Clinton, did not help himself. At times, he even appeared listless.
Clinton, by parrying her rivals' critiques and avoiding saying anything incendiary, emerged unscathed for the most part. At times, though, she acted too much like she already has the nomination sewn up and refused to answer questions on Social Security and Iran, among other issues.

And while some had their moments, none of the other five contenders broke out of the pack.

The bottom line: While it's still three months until the first caucuses and primaries, Clinton is well ahead and the nomination is hers to lose.

Interestingly, a couple of different groups at Dartmouth College, which hosted the debate, came to different conclusions about the debate.

A focus group of 16 students, organized by the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and Social Sciences, thought that Obama turned in a very weak performance.

But in an online poll by open-vote.com, Obama finished second. Of the 600 respondents, 31 percent said they thought Clinton won, 25 percent said Obama, and 19 percent said Edwards.

By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff

Candidates are about to release their fundraising numbers for July, August and September. Every quarter, campaigns play an expectations game where they downplay what they'll bring in and inflate what they expect from their rivals.

Nothing new about that. Still, we couldn't get over the enormous clipart illustration that appeared today at the top of a Clinton campaign news website, HillaryHub.com, along with a headline that screamed "Fundraising Projections: Obama Leads Again."

The picture is down now, although the link to a Newday article remains. Did someone think that maybe it was a little too much?

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama speaks during a campaign stop today in Peterborough, N.H. (AP Photo)

PETERBOROUGH, N.H. -- Barack Obama woke up today with a bad head cold and a bad headline: A new University of New Hampshire poll shows Hillary Clinton way ahead of him (43 percent to 20 percent) among Granite State Democrats.

But at least he got lucky with the weather. About 1,000 people (according to the campaign's count) came out for a pre-debate rally this morning under unrelenting sunshine in bucolic Peterborough, in the southwest part of the state.

Notable -- other than the unseasonably warm temperature -- was Obama's sharper critique of the ways of Washington, and, obliquely, of Clinton herself. Will we see more of this when the Democrats meet tonight at Dartmouth College?

Obama began with his standard stump speech, but he added some new attacks on the Beltway that left little doubt about whom he was referring to.

"George Bush and Dick Cheney may have perfected the art of special-interest driven partisan politics, but they didn't invent it," Obama said. "It was there before they came into office, and if we're not careful it will be there after they leave. That's what's at stake in this election."

Translation: The Clintons, too, are purveyors of partisan politics, and a Clinton White House would be more of the same.

Obama continued: "Now there are those in this race who tout their experience working the system as is. And what I have to remind them of is that the system has not been working for us. There are those who say we just need somebody who can play the game better in Washington. And what I'm saying is that we need to put an end to the game-playing."

Translation: Don't believe the hype from Clinton supporters that I have too few years in Washington; that's an asset.

Obama then went on to note that "we [read: Clinton] have been talking about our health care crisis for decades now, through Democratic and Republican administrations. And yet year after year after year after year, nothing seems to change."

UPDATE: The Obama campaign takes issue with the characterization of today's attacks on Washington as "new." They contend Obama has said much the same thing for three weeks.

A new WMUR/CNN poll released this afternoon shows that among likely primary voters, frontrunner Mitt Romney has dropped 10 percentage points, from 33 percent to 23 percent, since July. The survey shows his rivals gaining ground, with Rudy Giuliani creeping up to 22 percent, from 18 percent in July, and John McCain rising to 17 percent from 12 percent. Fred Thompson, meanwhile, who officially joined the race earlier this month, barely moved: The poll shows him at 12 percent, compared with 13 percent in July. The sampling error was plus or minus 5.4 percentage points. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they were still trying to decide whom to vote for. Only 13 percent said they had definitely decided. "There is absolutely no clear frontrunner in this race," Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, which conducted the poll, told WMUR. Giuliani has the best favorability rating, with 71 percent viewing him favorably and 22 percent viewing him unfavorably. They also rate Giuliani as the most likeable candidate and the one with the best chance of defeating the Democratic nominee. But Romney's attempts to portray himself as the candidate who represents change in Washington -- the main emphasis of his recent TV ads and a key speech in Michigan last weekend -- appears to sinking in. Twenty-five percent said Romney was the candidate who could "bring needed change," compared with 18 percent for Giuliani and 13 percent for McCain. McCain got the highest ratings for having the "right experience" to be president, followed by Romney and then Giuliani.

By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff

Hillary Clinton is coming to Boston for another fundraiser aimed at the common man, woman or college student.

Traditional fundraisers cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a head, but campaigns are also trying to pump up their number of donors -- and the level of enthusiasm for their candidate -- with so-called "low dollar" events. Barack Obama has been particular good at that, even counting t-shirt sales as donations. Clinton did a low-cost event this summer at the Tabernacle on Martha's Vineyard.

This time, the Clinton campaign is expecting to pack up to 2,800 people into Symphony Hall on Oct. 10, for $20 a ticket, to see Clinton as well as actress Mary Steenburgen and Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe. Cohosts include local student groups that are backing Clinton as well as local politicians and some of the big name donors like Barbara Lee and Elaine Schuster.

"The drive to raise money is off the charts," said Jon Patsavos, Clinton's New England finance director. "But there's also a demand from college students, young professionals and people on a fixed income to open the doors."

Even this long before the first nominating contests, candidates' schedules tend to blur together -- another town hall meeting, one more house party, the latest fund-raiser.

So it's understandable that John Edwards, for one, is trying to spice things up a bit.

On his latest swing through New Hampshire, the Democratic hopeful will on Thursday become the first candidate to take part in a dialogue hosted by MTV and MySpace. Questions will come from visitors to Edwards's MySpace page and websurfers on MTV and MySpace, and Edwards will be at the University of New Hampshire to answer them.

Later Thursday and on Friday, Edwards plans a series of "economic fairness" town hall meetings that are combined with bluegrass concerts featuring The Bluegrass Brothers, Ralph Stanley II, and former Congressman Ben "Cooter" Jones.

And his eldest daughter Cate will bring a celebrity with her while campaigning in Iowa this weekend. James Denton, who plays one of the put-upon men in "Desperate Housewives," will join her at events on college campuses and elsewhere, including tailgating Saturday before the Iowa Hawkeyes football game. Cate Edwards, a Harvard Law student, is a board member of Generation Engage, a new nonpartisan youth voter initiative.

Dartmouth College students will provide some immediate feedback about how the Democratic presidential contenders perform in tonight's much-anticipated debate on campus.

More than 450 students have registered to vote in online polls on an independent website, open-vote.com, created by two graduate students.

"Students deserve to have their voice heard, but traditional polling relies on home phones and leaves college students out entirely," one of the founders, Colin Van Ostern, said in a statement. "It is amazing that with all the new technology and increased internet access in recent years, up until now there still has been no good way to see what a college campus thinks."

Students will be able to say who they believe won the debate, and also which candidate they plan to support in both the Democratic and Republican primaries.

With Hillary Clinton extending her lead in the latest New Hampshire poll, the buzz in the blogosphere today is that Barack Obama and John Edwards might more aggressively go after her in the two-hour face-off, which will be aired live on MSNBC, NECN, and New Hampshire Public Radio starting at 9 p.m.

Presidential campaigns try to capitalize on the news. But sometimes the news just won't cooperate.

Just ask John Edwards. He planned to march the picket line with striking United Auto Workers members in Buffalo, on the way to the Democratic debate at Dartmouth College tonight.

The appearance with Local 774 outside the General Motors powertrain plant would have been a sure-fire photo opportunity and TV moment (and maybe footage for a campaign ad) for someone who has been fighting for unions for years and who is counting on labor support to boost his candidacy. The strike would have been a perfect talking point during the debate, especially to press his case that the Clinton administration -- including frontrunner Hillary Clinton -- hurt workers with free trade agreements.

But then GM and the UAW announced they had reached a tentative settlement covering 73,000 workers.

After cancelling the picket-line appearance, Edwards tried to make the best of the situation.

"I honor the strength and solidarity shown by 73,000 UAW members who walked the line to get a deal that protects their jobs and honors the standards they have created over decades," he said in a statement issued by his campaign. "This process illustrates that collective bargaining works, and I am happy that both sides are satisfied with today's outcome.

"This settlement highlights the significance of two issues that every worker in America is concerned about -- health care and job security. I am encouraged that UAW members have won promises of job security in an era where our government's trade policies are undercutting and exporting jobs that pay living wages. I believe that unionized American autoworkers, if given the chance, can compete with workers from anywhere to produce the most modern and energy efficient vehicles in the world."

On the eve of the Democrats debating Wednesday at Dartmouth College, a new poll out today shows Hillary Clinton apparently widening her lead in New Hampshire, home of the first primary.

Clinton, the national frontrunner, has the support of 43 percent of Granite State Democrats, according to the CNN/WMUR poll, compared to 20 percent for Barack Obama. In a similar poll in July, Clinton led Obama by a narrower margin, 36 percent to 27 percent.

In the poll, 54 percent of those surveyed also said that Clinton has the best chance among the Democratic contenders to beat the Republican nominee, up from 37 percent in July.

Also encouraging for Clinton, 36 percent said she was likeliest to bring needed change, compared to 24 percent who said Obama, who has made change a key theme of his campaign.

John Edwards has moved up to third place, with 12 percent, up from 9 percent in July. Bill Richardson has dropped to fourth at 6 percent, down from 11 percent.

But only 17 percent of respondents said they have definitely decided on a candidate.

The poll, conducted Sept. 17-24 by the University of New Hampshire, surveyed 307 New Hampshire residents who said they plan to vote in the Democratic primary. The margin of error is plus or minus 5.5 percentage points.

Rest assured, this entry won't win. And not just because it goes way over the time limit.

The creative folks at Slate.com came up with a spoof for Mitt Romney's contest for supporters to put together a TV ad for his presidential campaign. The spot, titled "Five Brothers," borrows from "Band of Brothers," the highly acclaimed series about World War II, to skewer Romney over a comment he made on the campaign trail.

Asked last month by an antiwar activist in Iowa why Romney's five sons -- who are in their mid-20s to mid-30s -- had not enlisted in the military, Romney replied, "One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

The Slate ad, first spotted by Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, shows the sons playing golf, riding a campaign bus across Iowa, and ruminating about fireflies.

On the other hand, the nine authorized finalists, unveiled today, are full of soaring music, Americana scenes, and flattering photos of Romney.

Many of the same speech snippets and scenes appear since, as part of the contest, entrants used 372 photos, 44 video clips, and 36 audio files provided by the campaign. And some entries crib liberally from ads that have already aired.

Voting continues through 11:59 p.m. Wednesday. To prevent electronic ballot stuffing, voters must provide an email address.

"The winner will become the first amateur ever to have his or her work used as an official television advertisement for a presidential campaign," Romney's camp said. "This contest demonstrates Romney for President’s commitment to using cutting-edge technology to engage voters online and harness the extraordinary enthusiasm of its grassroots supporters."

Just in time for tomorrow night's Democratic presidential debate at Dartmouth College, Bill Richardson is going up with a new TV ad in New Hampshire that takes aim at the party's leading candidates for proposing leaving some residual forces in Iraq. The ad features three liberal bloggers advocating Richardson's position that the United States should pull all troops out of Iraq. "Bill Richardson is the only one who would actually end the war," says one blogger, Christina Siun O'Connell of firedoglake.com.

Left unsaid: It's debatable whether it would even be feasible to get troops out of Iraq as fast as Richardson wants to, and whether it's realistic to leave no American troops in the country at all. See Richardson's Iraq plan here.

Barack Obama, meanwhile, is trying to capitalize on his early opposition to the war, which he made clear in a speech on Oct. 2, 2002 in Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago. On Oct. 2 of this year, Obama's campaign is hosting events around the country designed to remind voters that, unlike John Edwards or Hillary Clinton, he opposed the war from the start.

In the talk-tough-on-Iran contest within the Republican primary, Mitt Romney keeps upping the rhetoric.

Romney repeatedly and vociferously condemned Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, before and now during his visit to New York this week. In a radio ad running in Iowa and South Carolina, he bragged that while Massachusetts governor, he refused to provide a State Police escort to former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami when he spoke at Harvard last year.

Today, in an opinion piece published in National Review Online, he says that failing to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions would dishonor the Greatest Generation and Sept. 11 victims.

"The world is looking to our leaders to meet the challenge of a rogue nation, bent on obtaining nuclear weapons," Romney writes. "Failure to do so would diminish the legacy of those who fought and died in World War II and of all victims of genocide and terror."

He calls for diplomatic isolation, stricter economic sanctions, and help from Arab countries to thwart any Iranian nuclear program. And he says Iran should be warned that if any nuclear weapons material it produces is used by terrorists, the world will exact a heavy price on Iran.

Ahmadinejad, during his visit, has repeated Iran's position that it is only pursuing civilian nuclear power.

"The response from the world would be directed not only at the terrorists, but also at the nation that supplied the fissile material," Romney writes. "And the response would be devastating."

The presidential candidates continued today to brag about endorsements, even though some of the backers are people without high national profiles and even though their significance is questionable.

Mitt Romney boasted of an endorsement from Congresswoman Kay Granger of Texas, and Rudy Giuliani of backing from former Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan.

Hillary Clinton announced the support of a bigger name, former Congressman William H. Gray III of Philadelphia, who is also a former head of the United Negro College Fund.

But the big endorsement -- especially for John Edwards -- isn't coming today.

The Service Employees International Union, which claims 1.8 million members and says it is the fastest-growing union, is postponing a decision until next month. The SEIU endorsement is cherished because the union can help its favored candidate with millions of dollars and thousands of volunteers.

Edwards and the two other Democratic finalists for the nod -- Clinton and Barack Obama -- are scheduled to speak today to members of the SEIU and other unions that are part of the Change To Win coalition.

With a major United Auto Workers strike as a backdrop, Democratic presidential candidates continued to pick up union endorsements today.

Barack Obama won the backing of one of the country's biggest jail unions, the New York City Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, which boasts 9,000 members. "Barack Obama is the one candidate who will put an end to the divisiveness in this country so that we can finally achieve greater economic prosperity for the working class and health care coverage for all Americans," president Norman Seabrook told the Associated Press.

But rival Hillary Clinton won the endorsement of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, which claims to represent 100,000 workers. "Hillary Clinton has the strength and experience to deliver the change America needs," union president John J. Flynn told the AP. "After years of an administration that has turned its back on working families, we need a president whose priorities are our priorities."

By Sasha Issenberg, Globe Staff

In a recent column for Townhall.com, James Bopp, Jr. -- an adviser to Mitt Romney and free-speech activist -- unveiled a new line of attack against Fred Thompson: reminding voters of his support for campaign-finance reform by attaching the fomer Tennessee senator's name to a signature piece of legislation, referring to it as "McCain-Feingold-Thompson."

The bill, which was initially introduced in 1995 and signed into law in 2002, has been unpopular among conservative interest groups galled by its restrictions on election-time advertising. Thompson's role as a key early supporter -- one of a handful of Senate Republicans who joined McCain and an overwhelming majority of Democrats in the chamber -- is an issue where Romney could have an opening to turn the tables on Thompson and accuse him of insufficient right-wing orthodoxy.

In 2000, Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran informed McCain he would vote for the bill -- overshadowing Thompson as the most prominent conservative Southerner on the team. In early 2001, Thompson jokingly complained to McCain about the new references to "McCain-Feingold-Cochran," according to "Citizen McCain," Elizabeth Drew's book-length account of the legislative campaign told from the Arizonan's perspective.

"I think I was the third person to sign onto this bill," Thomson told McCain. "Now that it's achieved such popularity, John, I'd like my name mentioned more often."

"It will be referred to as 'the Thompson bill' from now on," McCain replied.

Now that Thompson has achieved more popularity than McCain among Republican primary voters, it seems likely Romney will be referring to it as "the Thompson bill," as well.

By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff

Today, Hillary Clinton is netting her second endorsement from a former 2008 rival, this time Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. Bayh has won election to both the Senate and the governor's office -- two terms each -- in a heavily red state, so his endorsement helps the Clinton campaign make the case that she is electable despite the distaste for her among many moderate and conservative-leaning voters.

Bayh, who put aside his own presidential ambitions last December, is also seen as a potential vice presidential nominee.

The first former 2008 contender to get behind Clinton, and another vice presidential possibility, is former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who endorsed her in March. Vilsack has been campaigning energetically for Clinton, although last week he caused her a big headache when he lashed former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on the New York 1 cable channel.

“I can’t even get into the number of marriages and the fact that his children -- the relationship he has with his children -- and what kind of circumstance New York was in before September the 11th," Vilsack said.

Clinton distanced herself from the comments and told George Stephanopoulos on ABC yesterday, "We are not running a campaign that goes down that road."

General Wesley Clark, who ran for president in 2004, endorsed Clinton last weekend.

Clinton's campaign also announced today that she has been endorsed by the 100,000-strong International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers.

Mitt Romney continues to make political hay out of the visit to New York by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now airing a radio ad highlighting Romney's long record of opposing visits by Iranian leaders to the United States.

"On the eve of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, Harvard University invited former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami to Boston," says the announcer in the ad, which begins running in Iowa and South Carolina today, and then in Florida later this week.

"The same Mohammad Khatami who has supported the terrorist group Hezbollah, advocates destruction of Israel and stood by while Jews and Christians were persecuted. The Iranian wanted VIP treatment at taxpayer expense.

"But Governor Mitt Romney said, 'No.' Governor Romney called the invitation a 'disgrace' and refused to grant Khatami a police escort.

"Now another Iranian President is visiting America, coming to New York, and Governor Mitt Romney is leading the opposition."

Romney's press shop also announced today that Romney sent a letter to protesters at today's National Rally to End the Threat across the street from the United Nations, where Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the UN General Assembly tomorrow.

"At Israel's Herzliya Conference in January, I called for the world's leaders to speak three truths: Iran's dangerous actions must be stopped, they can be stopped and they will be stopped," he wrote in the letter.

"If the principles of the UN's founders and the harsh lessons from past genocide have any meaning, our leaders must act now to confront the Iranian regime's terrorist, genocidal and nuclear ambitions. Failure to act now would diminish the legacy of those who fought and died in World War II and of all victims of genocide and terror."

A story by Sasha Issenberg in today's Globe shows how the presidential candidates in both parties are using Ahmadinejad's visit as a "test case for their differing approaches to dealing with hostile nations."

Barack Obama continues to turn up the pressure in Iowa, announcing the endorsement today of Gordon R. Fischer, a lawyer in Des Moines and a well-connected former chairman of the state Democratic Party. Fischer's endorsement comes on the heels of Obama's two new TV ads in Iowa.

Fischer told reporters in a conference call this morning that after weighing the campaigns of all the major Democratic candidates, he believed Obama was the most electable, the candidate best-equipped to change the country, and the one with the most inspired policies.

"I am absolutely convinced that Senator Obama is the true change agent who can get elected and has the right policies at this time to move our country forward," Fischer said.

Fischer, a long-time activist in the Democratic Party, reiterated what Obama's campaign -- which has 31 offices across the state and a formidable base of grass-roots support there -- has long believed: that Iowa will be won on the ground. "I think ultimately, my value is, frankly, knowing a lot of people and being able to hopefully bring some of those people along."

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, added, "We marry that grass-roots enthusiasm with leaders who have their own relationships ... We think that's a pretty potent combination."

Obama, meanwhile, will beginning running his 60-second ad "Believe" in New Hampshire tomorrow, the first time he will be on air in the Granite State. Watch the ad here.