NYT, pg1: Lesson of Defeat: Obama Comes Out Punching

[DeepModem Mom]

Political Memo
Lesson of Defeat: Obama Comes Out Punching
By MICHAEL POWELL and JEFF ZELENY
Published: March 6, 2008

....his challenge now is about more than demographics. He must reassure supporters, and party leaders who had started to rally to his side, that he can absorb the lessons of Tuesday’s defeats. And he faces a challenge of rebounding as quickly as he did from his loss in New Hampshire. Flying from Texas back home to Chicago on Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama delivered the message that he intended to counterpunch forcefully.

His campaign aides on Wednesday urged Mrs. Clinton to release her tax returns from 2006, as well as her papers from her years as first lady, which Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, described as “secreted in the Clinton library.” “She’s made the argument that she’s thoroughly vetted, in contrast to me,” Mr. Obama said to reporters aboard his campaign plane. “I think it’s important to examine that argument.”

Over the last year, though, Mr. Obama has struggled to deliver that examination. He picks up the cudgel, and then sets it down. The problem is that Mr. Obama has built a campaign persona as the man of hope, a young candidate with oratorical skills who promises to build bridges across the ideological divide. If he indulges his inner Chicago pol, formed in a city where politics is conducted with crowbars, he risks taking the shine off. But his advisers say he has little choice.

Mr. Obama took aim on Wednesday at Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she is a seasoned hand in foreign policy. “What exactly is this foreign experience that she’s claiming?” he said. “I know she talks about visiting 80 countries. It is not clear. Was she negotiating treaties or agreements or was she handling crises during this period of time? “My sense is the answer’s no.”...

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Mr. Obama seems likely to take a tougher stance toward Mrs. Clinton, if only because he saw how well such tactics worked against him. When the Clinton campaign attacked on multiple fronts last week, he sometimes sounded defensive, occasionally talking at his audiences rather than with them....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/us/politics/06obama.html?ref=todayspaper