Iowa Trip to Mark New Intensity for Obama Campaign

In a campaign that has been defined as a contest between change and experience, Clinton seems to have the advantage. In recent weeks, Obama has retooled his stump speech to more directly address the experience question, casting his opponents as people simply with more "years in Washington." And he will emphasize this point by arguing that it was sound judgment, not deep Washington experience, that led him to oppose the Iraq war, in contrast to Clinton and other Democratic candidates.

Yesterday, Obama responded to former president Bill Clinton's criticism in an interview last week that the senator is too green to be commander in chief. "I remember what was said years ago by a candidate running for president," Obama told a crowd in Concord, N.H. "He said: 'The same old experience is not relevant. You can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience.' Well, that candidate was Bill Clinton, and I think he was absolutely right."

But David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, acknowledges that Obama needs more time to explain why he is qualified for the presidency after only two years in the Senate. "Obviously, there are voters saying Obama is an untraditional candidate," he said. "This is something they're processing. They're probably evaluating him differently, so I think we do have a little bit more work to do than some of the other campaigns."

One of the challenges of his campaign is that on most major issues, Obama and Clinton have little difference in views, one of the reasons Obama has had to rely so much on his initial opposition to the war to distinguish himself from her. His early war opposition remains one of his strongest applause lines on the campaign trail. But even among Democrats who want a quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq, polls show that Clinton is the favored candidate.

Seeking to cast Clinton as a Washington insider, Obama has touted his non-Washington credentials to argue that he can reform a system dominated by lobbyists and special-interest money. But it's not clear how effective that line of criticism has been.

"The lobbyist stuff is inside baseball," said Marilyn Katz, an Obama fundraiser. "The question remains: Who do you believe has the leadership capacity?"

In many ways, the same questions that hovered around Obama's candidacy when he announced last winter remain today. One is whether he can convert the enthusiasm that propelled him unexpectedly from first-term senator to presidential candidate into actual votes in Iowa and New Hampshire. Another is whether he can expand his support from a base built on well-educated, relatively affluent Democrats to the kind of broader coalition that has been the hallmark of every winning candidacy in past Democratic races.

Obama advisers said they plan no significant adjustments to their overall strategy but predicted there will be changes around the edges of the campaign. Valerie Jarrett, a longtime friend of Obama's, has begun to play a more active role inside the campaign. Obama's Senate chief of staff, Pete Rouse, is likely to shift his focus from the Senate to the campaign as the primary-caucus season nears.

And they continue to express confidence in Obama's ability to defy expectations.

"He looks back at his [Senate] primary election in 2004, when he was sitting comfortably in fourth place for a really long time," Gibbs said. "Then the campaign got fully engaged both on the ground and on TV. We all know what happened."