The resignation Friday of a top adviser to Barack Obama for calling Hillary Clinton "a monster" came a day after Clinton's top spokesman likened Obama to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, marking a rise in tensions in a Democratic presidential campaign that has lasted longer and become far more grueling than expected.With the candidates looking to the slog toward the next major primary on April 22 in Pennsylvania, both have focused on an attack-and-parry strategy as they battle for the nomination that cannot be won with elected delegates alone. And as the back-and-forth continued Friday, party leaders have become increasingly concerned that the tarnish will leave the eventual nominee bloodied for the general election.
With polls showing that many Democrats want to see the race extended, Clinton again played to the sentiments of some looking for a so-called dream ticket of both contenders as the answer to avoiding a convention fight in Denver over the role top party elders and other officials would play in deciding the nomination.
"This is a moment of historic celebration for America, but you've got to make a choice," Clinton told supporters at a morning stop in Hattiesburg, Miss., which holds its primary next week. "A lot of people wish they didn't have to. I've had people say I wish I could vote for both of you. Well, that might be possible some day. But first, I need your vote on Tuesday."Meanwhile, Republican nominee John McCain showed a flash of temper when he cut off a reporter during an exchange over whether he had spoken to Democratic Sen. John Kerry about being his vice presidential running mate in 2004.
A clearly irate McCain interrupted Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times, saying that everyone knew he had a private conversation, and he kept interrupting as she tried to follow up.
And McCain, who has drawn fire for a week since he was endorsed by televangelist John Hagee of San Antonio, on Friday repudiated any views of Hagee's "if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics."
Heated in Wyoming
For the Democrats, both candidates turned rare presidential campaign visits to Wyoming into attacks on credibility.
The visits by Obama and Clinton to a state of a half-million people on the eve of its Democratic caucuses symbolized the importance each side has placed on winning, no matter how small the prize. There are a dozen delegates at stake on Saturday, and Clinton, who has not fared well in caucuses, admitted to a crowd in Cheyenne that she had "an uphill climb" in the state.
With emotions running high and no end to the battle in sight, Obama even forgot what state he was in following a visit to a diner in Casper, Wyo. "It's really nice in Wisconsin and Wyoming," he said, without missing a beat.
Obama's campaign began the day by announcing the resignation of foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, a Harvard professor and former journalist who made disparaging remarks about Clinton to The Scotsman newspaper of Scotland.
"She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Power said of Clinton in an on-the-record interview. "You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."
'Imitating Ken Starr'
Reports of Power's comments came a day after Howard Wolfson, Clinton's chief spokesman, told reporters in a conference call that the negative criticisms and demands of the Obama campaign for the release of tax records and other information resembled the tactics of Starr, whose wide-ranging investigation of the Clintons' real estate dealings in 1994 expanded to include Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Starr's findings provided the basis for the Republican-led impeachment of Bill Clinton.
"I, for one, do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president," Wolfson said.
On Friday, Wolfson maintained to reporters that he "did not refer" and "did not say that Sen. Obama was like Ken Starr." Asked by reporters about her spokesman's statement, Clinton initially said it was reporters who were making the linkage. Reminded that it was her spokesman who made the comment, she described the difference between Power's comment and Wolfson's statement as one is "an ad hominem attack and one is a historical reference." Clinton said she agreed with Wolfson's statement.
Obama was asked by a reporter about the latest flap over one of his advisers and whether he was being drawn into a knife fight with Clinton. "No," he said. "I wasn't ... drawn into a knife fight."
But the Clinton campaign also tried to draw linkage between remarks Power made in an interview with the BBC and problems the Obama campaign had recently when it had to acknowledge that an economic adviser had met with Canadian authorities and discussed a controversial trade pact after earlier denying such a meeting took place.
In the BBC interview, Power said Obama "will of course not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or U.S. senator" to withdraw troops from Iraq.
"He's attacked me continuously for having no hard exit date, and now we learned that he doesn't have one. In fact, he doesn't have a plan at all, according to his top foreign policy adviser," Clinton said of Obama. "If he keeps telling people one thing while his campaign tells people abroad something else, I'm not sure what the American people should believe."
But Obama told an audience in Casper that Clinton was trying to use Power's remarks "to imply that I wasn't serious about bringing this war to an end."
