Sunday Talk: Negative? Who Me?
WSJ.COM
Neil King Jr. wraps up the Sunday talk shows:
Care to master the art of smearing an opponent without looking too negative? With four days to go before the Iowa caucuses, the leading presidential contenders did just that on the Sunday talk shows. While accusing one another of being dishonest, fantasy-prone, downright phony or simply wet behind the ears, the candidates also tried to keep their own hands clean.
Sunday TalkRepublican Sen. John McCain may have done it best on ABC's "This Week." His campaign recently ran an ad in New Hampshire citing a local editorial that called Mitt Romney a phony. So is Romney a phony?
"I think he's a person who's changed his positions on many issues," McCain said, in an artful dodge. No, he isn't going to come out and use the phony word, but "I will continue to quote from respected newspapers if necessary."
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was slightly less gentle. He came close to calling Romney a liar for running ads that Huckabee claims have distorted his record. "Mitt Romney is running a very desperate, and frankly, a dishonest campaign," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." The he took a more targeted jab: "If you aren't being honest in obtaining a job, can we trust you to be honest if you get the job?"
With Huckabee and Romney battling it out in Iowa, and McCain apparently gaining ground in New Hampshire, the Republican race has gotten particularly mean-spirited in recent weeks. The top Democrats have also pulled out the knives, but their attacks continue to be more oblique. Neither Sen. Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama care to run the risk of being seen hurling mud on their own.
So Clinton used her appearance on "This Week" to pound away on a familiar theme: That her experience as first lady trumps Obama's brief tenure in the Senate. "I think that my experience is unique, having been eight years in the White House, having, yes, been part of making history," she said. "What people know about me is that I've been vetted and I've been tested."
Clinton has largely avoided directly questioning Obama's fitness for the White House, leaving that job to her husband, President Clinton.
In turn, Obama has taken to using Bill Clinton to combat Bill Clinton. Critics, he said, made the same lack-of-experience charges against Bill Clinton when he ran for president in 1992. "And I have more formal foreign policy experience than he did," the Illinois senator said on "This Week."
Polls show Clinton, Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards locked in a virtual dead heat in Iowa. Having stacked his entire campaign on a strong showing in Iowa, Edwards has also been a lot more aggressive in criticizing his top opponents. "It's a complete fantasy," Edwards said on CBS's "Face the Nation", to think that President Clinton wouldn't play "a major role" in the White House should Hillary Clinton win the election. Then again, should he win, Edwards said that President Clinton would probably play a role in his administration, too.
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