Democrats Soften Tone for Final Debate in Iowa

Photo

In the final Democratic presidential debate of the year Thursday, both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were put on the spot about leadership: whether she tended to be too secretive and insular, and whether he could mold a new foreign policy when many of his advisers had worked in Bill Clinton’s White House.

Mrs. Clinton, confronted at the debate in Johnston, Iowa, specifically about her closed-door health care task force in 1993-94, said she had “learned a lot from that experience,” but did not blame herself for being secretive.

“Clearly one of the principal lessons is that you have to have a very strong communication strategy, and we didn’t do that,” she said, before promising to have an “open and transparent government” if elected president.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, traded humorous jabs with Mrs. Clinton over his use of her husband’s advisers. Before Mr. Obama could answer how he would differ from the Clinton era when the advisers were the same, Mrs. Clinton piped up, “I want to hear that!” As the audience broke into laughter, Mr. Obama said, “Well, Hillary, I’m looking forward to you advising me, as well.”

Mr. Obama went on to say that veteran advisers were not an obstacle to fresh thinking. “I think that there are a lot of good people — in the Clinton years, the Carter years, George Bush I — who understand that our military power is just one component of our power,” he said.

Those two moments were brought on by questions from the moderator of the debate, which was sponsored by The Des Moines Register. They were among the few ripples in an otherwise placid 90-minute forum, where, in a sharp departure from past debates, not one of the six Democratic candidates attacked another by name.

Instead, with three weeks to go until the first-in-the-nation caucuses there, the candidates took the opportunity to make friendly pitches to Iowa voters. Strategists fear that voters could be turned off by an increasingly negative tone in the campaign.

Indeed, one of the most striking displays of camaraderie of the campaign season came when Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware was asked whether he was uncomfortable talking about race, given some of his past statements that he had later apologized for, including calling Mr. Obama, who is the only black Democratic candidate, “clean” and “articulate.”

Mr. Biden, a six-term senator, looked ashen and downcast as he recalled that the civil rights movement was the spark for his political career, and said that no one who knows him “has ever wondered about my commitment to civil rights and civil liberties.”

Several other candidates then applauded him, and Mrs. Clinton and Senator Christopher J. Dodd added “Hear! Hear!” Then Mr. Obama asked for a moment.

“I have absolutely no doubt about what is in his heart and the commitment that he has made with respect to racial equality in this country,” Mr. Obama said. “So I will provide some testimony, as they say in church, that Joe is on the right side of the issues and is fighting every day for a better America.”

For the most part, though, the candidates sought to underscore the closing arguments they intend to make in the final days of Iowa, where three candidates appear locked in a dead heat: Senator Clinton of New York, Senator Obama of Illinois, and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

Tapping Democratic anger at President Bush, they mentioned the word “change” or some variant more than three dozen times. Mr. Edwards hewed especially close to his campaign themes, returning over and over to pledges to restore trust, honesty and character to government.

“We’re having trouble growing and strengthening the middle class because corporate power and greed have literally taken over the government,” he said, in another frequent refrain. “And we need a president who’s willing to take these powers on.”

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, vowed to “level with the American people about how we’re going to solve our problems.” Mr. Dodd of Connecticut championed human rights and an energy independence plan in a couple of his answers, and emphasized his support for a tax on carbon-based fuels that he said were “killing this planet.”

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico pledged to support universal preschool and full-day kindergarten. In one of the few mentions of foreign policy, he expressed concern that politicians and the news media were paying less attention to the Iraq war.

“Somehow, we’re losing sight that that’s the most important fundamental issue affecting our country,” Mr. Richardson said.

Rather than point up contrasts, the candidates fell mostly into agreement when the debate moderator, The Register’s editor, Carolyn Washburn, asked how they would strive to bring fiscal discipline to Washington, negotiate fair trade agreements and improve the economic condition for struggling Americans.

Mrs. Clinton said at one point that she favored “raising taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals,” while keeping middle-class tax cuts, and said that, as president, she would want Congress “to send me everything that Bush vetoed, like stem cell research and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”

In a more subtle way, though, the Democratic contenders sought to draw distinctions as they head into the last three weeks of the Iowa campaign. The Republican candidates had a similar opportunity in their final debate of the year on Wednesday.

“Everybody on this stage has an idea about how to get change,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Some believe you get change by demanding it. Some believe you get it by hoping for it. I believe you get it by working hard for change.”

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers said after the debate that this remark referred, respectively, to Mr. Edwards (for his aggressive style on the stump), Mr. Obama (for his call for a politics of hope), and Mrs. Clinton (who has sought to cast herself as a workhorse).

The Clinton campaign, which has seen its momentum ebb as Mr. Obama’s has grown in recent weeks, has decided to challenge him directly for the mantle of change agent, a phrase that Mrs. Clinton, her husband and aides are now using repeatedly.