Foes hunt for chink in Clinton's armor

M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

Thursday, November 1, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa - It's no secret why there's an invisible "Kick me" sign on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's back.

For the moment, she's running away with the national polls in the Democratic presidential contest, and it's getting much later than some folks in 49 states might think.

The national calendar says there's still more than a year until the 2008 presidential election, but there are only 62 days left before the first-in-the-nation Iowa precinct caucuses, Jan. 3, 2007.

So rivals like Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards stepped up their attacks during a televised debate on Tuesday night - questioning her candor, attacking her votes for the Iraq war and a new resolution pressuring Iran, wondering aloud whether she can really beat Republicans.

Iowans were listening, and from the pages of the Des Moines Register to college classrooms from Waverly to Iowa City, the hot debate on Wednesday was whether Clinton's opponents had finally found an opening.

David Yepsen, the Register's veteran political columnist, set the tone, declaring Edwards the night's winner and saying that Clinton "turned in an uneven, sometimes waffling performance."

Edwards, who recently slipped from the top spot in the Iowa polls, has started accusing Clinton of "doubletalk" on various issues, pointedly saying the country needs a president "who is honest, who is sincere, who has integrity."

He and Obama both seized on Clinton's answer to a question about New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to offer drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. Clinton said she understood "why Gov. Spitzer is trying to do it" - because of the Bush administration's "failure" to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. But she clarified that she was not endorsing the plan.

Yepsen said Edwards came ready for the scrap and did his candidacy some good," while Obama's attacks were "disjointed" or "lackluster," saying the Illinois senator is finding it hard to balance his nice guy image and call for consensus politics with the need to step up the attacks.

The attacks on Clinton were a hot topic in a Wednesday morning class at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, said professor of mass communications, Jeff Stein.

While Clinton did a good job shrugging off attacks early in the debate, on the immigration question "she gave them a tremendous opportunity to make their case that she hasn't been answering questions," Stein said. "At the end, when Obama and Edwards could say, 'She has talked for two minutes and I have no idea what her position is,' that has some stickiness."

Bruce Gronbeck, a political science professor from the University of Iowa, said the attacks rattled Clinton a bit on the immigration question. But otherwise, "She just made everybody look like second-run candidates. She set up her campaign as the campaign that's issue-centered, policy-centered."