Obama finds voice against Clinton

Midway through Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, Barack Obama found his voice.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton sidestepped a question on the decision to keep secret the papers showing advice she gave her husband, the former president, Obama nailed her.

“Not releasing ... these records at the same time, Hillary, as you’re making the claim that this is the basis for your experience, I think, is a problem,” the Illinois senator declared. “Part of what we need to do is rebuild trust in our government again. And that means being open and transparent to the American people.”

He went on to articulate one of the main cases against her candidacy, noting that Republicans are “very comfortable” with renewing the partisan fights of the past decades. “And what we don’t need,” he said, “is another eight years of bickering.”

Until then, the MSNBC debate had followed a scripted format.

Obama kept his vow to cite policy differences with Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards renewed accusations that she epitomizes the corruption of an interest-driven political system, and the front-runner ignored their specific points and gave stock defenses.

The questioners, NBC’s Brian Williams and Tim Russert, mainly asked questions of Clinton’s rivals designed to bring out sharp attacks on her.

As a result, viewers never saw that, despite Obama’s efforts to draw policy contrasts, the only differences between them are modest. He never had to explain why, if he believes the Senate’s resolution condemning Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is so dangerous, he failed to show up to vote against it.

No cuts

He was asked why he said last spring that “everything is on the table” on Social Security but now rules out benefit cuts or increases in the retirement age. Obama said he has concluded that the best option is to lift the payroll tax cap so wealthy Americans pay more, an easy way to avoid more difficult potential trade-offs.

His sallies against Clinton mostly paled beside the blasts from Edwards, whose candidacy is under even greater pressure because of lagging fundraising and rather modest poll showings outside the first caucus state of Iowa.

“If people want the status quo, Senator Clinton’s your candidate,” said Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, adding that he would bring “real change” to a “broken ... rigged ... corrupt” system that “does not work for the American people.”

But he was never asked to explain why an all-out assault against “special interests” in Washington would make that system work better.

Judging from post-debate surveys, his blunderbuss approach was less successful than Obama’s more measured criticism. MSNBC’s survey showed Edwards in a third-place tie with Sen. Joseph Biden behind Obama and Clinton.

In the end, this debate may be remembered less for the Obama-Edwards criticism than for Clinton’s first signs of vulnerability.

By ignoring her chief rivals’ more factual criticisms, she passed up the chance to answer Edwards’ misleading accusation that she would keep more combat troops in Iraq than he would.

She also missed the opportunity to discuss with Obama the benefits of her approach to Social Security, concentrating on the broader fiscal question before tackling long-term entitlement reform.

Glaring look

Though she still smiled some when under attack, she also glared at them, recalling a harsher image that probably won’t help her much.

Until the final minutes, she avoided verbal missteps that could later be used against her. Then she answered a question about giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants by trying to praise New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer for his effort to deal with the problem without specifically endorsing his solution.

The reason was pretty clear. While she is right in citing the need to deal with illegal immigrants who drive cars, most Americans oppose giving them licenses.

So she waffled, enabling her rivals to pounce.

Obama ... used language similar to Clinton’s explanation of the need for action to say he favored licenses for illegal immigrants, a straightforward, though potentially risky, response.

X Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.