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Clinton, Obama Square Off

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By JANET HOOK, Los Angeles Times

Published: January 14, 2008

WASHINGTON - Tensions mounted between the two leading Democratic candidates for president Sunday, as Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a newly aggressive attack on Barack Obama, suggesting his much-vaunted opposition to the Iraq war was all talk and little action.

Clinton also tried to control the damage caused by her recent remark that seemed to demean the Rev. Martin Luther King's role in the civil rights movement, and she accused Obama's campaign of fueling the racially charged controversy.

Obama dismissed Clinton's claims, saying Clinton had descended into "political point-scoring."

The byplay dominated a particularly bitter day on the campaign trail, as both Democrats felt besieged by ungrounded personal attacks.

The nasty personal sparring, especially on the sensitive issue of race, signaled the intensity of the competition between the Democratic front-runners for support in upcoming primaries, including the Jan. 26 balloting in South Carolina, where blacks are a key constituency.

Clinton's criticism of Obama on Iraq revived focus on an issue that has diminished in prominence on the campaign trail, overtaken by concerns about the flagging economy.

The issue has been neutralized in part because Clinton and Obama now have virtually identical positions, supporting a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.

But in 2002, before Obama was in the Senate, he was a vocal opponent of going to war. Clinton, who was in the Senate, voted for the resolution authorizing the use of military force against Iraq, a vote that has given some Democrats reason to back Obama instead of her.

Obama has said he voted for war funding because he did not want troops already in Iraq to suffer. In a conference call with reporters Sunday, he said that Clinton was distorting his record and taking quotes out of context to create ambiguity where there was none.

He also said she was "ludicrous" to suggest that his campaign had a role in encouraging several prominent blacks - including some of Clinton's own supporters - to criticize her comment last week that "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ... It took a president to get it done."

Another contender for the Democratic nomination, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, waded into the dispute on Obama's side Sunday by denouncing Clinton's remark as overplaying Johnson's role and diminishing King's.

"Those who believe that real change starts with Washington politicians have been in Washington too long," Edwards said.

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