Detour From High Road in Clinton-Obama Clash

[Ethelk2044]

Obama was not aware of how his campaign reacted to Hillary's
Statement?



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=132


WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — After weeks of watching in frustration
as Senator Barack Obama presented himself as a fresh face
gliding above partisan politics, Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton has drawn Mr. Obama onto a muddy political field,
engaging him in a back-and-forth that recalls the kind of
Washington bickering Mr. Obama has decried. 

Mrs. Clinton’s effort to identify Mr. Obama with an attack
made by one of his chief Hollywood supporters was widely
viewed among Democrats as carrying some cost to Mrs. Clinton.
The remarks at the heart of the dispute, by David Geffen, the
Hollywood executive who was once a big fund-raiser for the
Clintons, were a sharp reminder of Clinton family history that
has led some Democrats to believe Mrs. Clinton cannot win a
general election.

But when it came to tallying the final score on the most
intense engagement so far in the 2008 presidential race, even
Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, seemed to
acknowledge that he may have been outmaneuvered.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Mr. Obama said he had not
been aware beforehand of the statement his campaign had put
out Wednesday morning responding to the public demand by
Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s hard-driving senior
communications adviser, that Mr. Obama denounce Mr. Geffen and
return the money he had raised.

Mr. Obama said he had been on a red-eye flight, getting a
haircut and taking his daughters to school as the fight broke
out, and strongly suggested he had told his aides he wanted to
stay above the fray. 

“I told my staff that I don’t want us to be a party to these
kinds of distractions because I want to make sure that we’re
spending time talking about issues,” Mr. Obama said. “My
preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to
slip into playing the game as it customarily is played.”

For Mrs. Clinton, the risks of going after Mr. Obama included
the possibility that some voters would view her as driven more
by tactical war-room politics than by the domestic and foreign
policy issues they are most concerned about.