WP, pg 1: Obama, Clinton Sparring Early

[DeepModem Mom]

Obama, Clinton Sparring Early
Campaigns' Scrutiny Unusually Intense
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 12, 2007; Page A01

In the month since the presidential nominating contest got underway, Obama (D-Ill.) and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) have barely mentioned each other's names in public or even greeted each other in the Senate halls. But each campaign has increasingly fixated on the other, engaging in a shadowboxing match in which they intentionally cross paths but dodge to avoid each other's subtle jabs. With an intensity unusual for this stage of the campaign the two are indirectly engaging, invading each other's terrain and going to great lengths to contrast their candidacies.

Clinton recently has been the aggressor: After following Obama to Selma, Ala., for a civil rights commemoration last week, she proposed voting-rights legislation at the same time as Obama, holding a rival news conference on Capitol Hill to announce her measure (although she has introduced similar legislation previously).

When legislators in South Carolina announced plans to have Obama give a keynote address in April, Clinton officials maneuvered -- unsuccessfully -- to get her a speaking slot as well. As recently as January, it was Obama who was seen to be playing catch-up on Iraq, introducing language to cap troop levels after Clinton offered similar legislation. In New Hampshire on Saturday night, Clinton compared the challenges in breaking down barriers to her candidacy to those faced in 1960 by John F. Kennedy, who most often has been invoked in comparisons to the youth and charisma of Obama.

Privately, Clinton advisers are working to blunt Obama's perceived momentum: In evening sessions with major party fundraisers at the home of Vernon Jordan last week, Clinton's strategists presented data portraying her as the Democratic candidate best positioned to win the general election and argued that Obama stands less of a chance, according to several people present.

Obama is hardly sitting still as the campaign accelerates. He held a highly publicized fundraiser on Clinton's New York turf over the weekend. When he arrived in Iowa, he began distributing a new glossy pamphlet declaring that he is the "only candidate for president" who has proposed binding legislation to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq and noting that he was "opposed to the Iraq war from the very start" -- although he was not yet in the Senate when Congress authorized President Bush to go to war. This message sets Obama apart from others in the Democratic field, including former senator John Edwards (N.C.), but also directly underscores his central policy difference with Clinton....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/11/AR2007031101690.html