THE NOTE: Clinton Pressed on Iran, Iraq

October 8, 2007 — -- Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani knows he looks better from the edge of town (and the rest of the field wants to make him his own worst enemy).

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton knows she's nowhere until people vote (and she gets to wait 'till next year to decide if she'd rather see the Yankees or the Cubs reach the promised land).

Former governor Mitt Romney knows you can't start a fire without a spark (and he'd love to battle Giuliani all the way home).

Sen. Barack Obama thinks he knows you win Iowa by living in the future (and not just counting on a miracle).

Former senator Fred Thompson knows no brilliant disguise will compensate for a bad debate tomorrow (and he'll need to bring more than talk about hopes and dreams).

Former senator John Edwards knows Clinton won't be coming down on her own (and he doesn't care if he's rising on water that's White or Black).

Sen. John McCain knows he's born to run as the underdog (but he's living proof that magic has its limits).

Gov. Bill Richardson thinks he knows that Democratic voters have their eyes on a prize called Iraq, Iraq, Iraq (and he may want to go missing the next time he's invited on a Sunday show).

Three months before game time, the analysis may come from Asbury Park, but the Republican fight is centering on New Hampshire, while the Democrats make it all about Iowa. And new polls confirm what the anecdotes are telling us: Clinton, D-N.Y., and Giuliani, R-N.Y., are the front-runners, but nobody's the boss this far out.

An unexpected encounter on the campaign trail in Iowa over the weekend provided a reminder to expect the unexpected, as Clinton was taken off-message on a subject she'd rather not discuss: Iran. Her vote last month in support of labeling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist entity was either a textbook centrist move -- looking past the Democratic primaries and toward the general election -- or precisely the kind of misstep that Clinton's rivals have been waiting all these months for.

Clinton was asked to defend her vote, in a testy exchange with a voter who said the resolution could authorize President Bush to use force against Iran. "I consider that part of a very robust and diplomatic effort because [it] wasn't in what you read to me -- that somebody obviously sent to you," Clinton said, per ABC's Eloise Harper. When the voter, Randall Rolph, said he was "offended" because the question was based on his own research, Clinton apologized but still argued that Rolph was misunderstanding the resolution.

Maybe it sounded familiar to her because Edwards, D-N.C., is saying it on the stump -- and he'll continue to hit the Iran message today on the trail in Iowa, according to his campaign. "I differ with her about that and I wonder, if George Bush goes to war, six months later, six months from now, are we going to hear again, 'If only I'd known then what I know now?' " Edwards said Saturday in Iowa City, per AP's Amy Lorentzen.

Newsweek's Howard Fineman sees Clinton trying to conduct damage control in the wake of her vote. "By nature, and now as a front runner, Clinton would rather issue diplomatic communiqués than take one side. Iran may be her toughest challenge," Fineman writes. "But her vote on the Revolutionary Guard measure -- sponsored by the Senate's hawkish, sort-of Democrat, Joe Lieberman -- has given scholars and bloggers in the antiwar netroots fodder; labeling the Iranian Army a terrorist organization, they say, gives Bush the excuse he needs to attack." Says Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.: "It could be read as tantamount to a declaration of war."

While Obama, D-Ill., makes sure Clinton hasn't heard the last of her vote on the Iraq war, he's making his faith a key part of his candidacy. "I cast about after college to see how I could participate in building God's kingdom," Obama said yesterday in Greenville, S.C., ABC's Sunlen Miller reports. "I can be an instrument of God the same way all of you are."

Obama today is talking energy policy in New Hampshire, and he's proposing "$150 billion over 10 years on new clean-energy programs, including proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to develop new energy sources," the Los Angeles Times' Judy Pasternak reports. The proposal "centers on a requirement that polluters pay for every ton of carbon emissions they release, as opposed to having rights to release some or all of the carbon dioxide they already send into the atmosphere."

And then there's the politics: "There are some in this race who actually make the argument that the more time you spend immersed in the broken politics of Washington, the more likely you are to change it," Obama plans to say, per excerpts released by his campaign. "I always find this a little amusing. I know that change makes for good campaign rhetoric, but when these same people had the chance to actually make it happen, they didn't lead."

A helpful birdie points out that Obama voted for the 2005 energy bill, which many Democrats -- including Clinton -- opposed because it was viewed as too favorable to Big Oil.

As if she needed another way to be considered the frontrunner, Clinton tops the field in Iowa in a new Des Moines Register poll; Clinton leads 29-23-22 over Edwards and Obama.

But Register columnist David Yepsen sees warning signs for the frontrunner. "The key to success is beating the expectations of the political community for how you'll do on caucus night," Yepsen writes in his blog. "We're also going to see those back of the pack candidates start feeding on each other as they seek to become that alternative challenger."