By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 6, 2007; 9:55 AM

Hillary Clinton's campaign was determined to respond to Barack Obama's insistence that, unlike some candidates, he had not been planning to run for president for years.

So the Clinton camp dug up a series of reported statements in which Obama had expressed interest in the White House. And it went way back--to the point that it invited ridicule. To wit:

"In third grade, Sen. Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' "

And: "In kindergarten, Sen. Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.' "

"Our mistake was putting the early examples in, because they undermined the bottom line," Clinton communications chief Howard Wolfson told me. "He's been attacking her for being ambitious when his ambitions are far better documented." Clinton strategists were also miffed that Obama was alluding to what they consider a bogus report that Hillary and Bill had a 20-year plan to share the presidency.

When a candidate goes on the attack, the media reaction can go one of two ways. Either reporters seize on the criticism and demand a response from the target of the assault, or they raise questions about whether the attacker has gone too far.

In Hillary's case, it's definitely been the latter.

I'm mildly surprised by this, since I don't think Hillary has said anything particularly harsh about Obama, and certainly not compared to the blistering negativity I've seen in so many campaign cycles. (Obama hasn't been over the top either, though he did call the former first lady "disingenuous.") The kindergarten caper was obviously overkill; nothing else she's said has struck me as out of bounds.

So why is Hillary getting so much grief? Because journalists love to hunt for signs of panic? Because the needling of Obama doesn't seem to revolve around large issue differences? Because reporters have somehow concluded that it's more unseemly for a woman to start smacking her opponent?

I don't know the answer, but I do know that this is a dangerous narrative for Clinton, since it makes her the issue rather than what she's saying about her rival from Illinois.

"For months," Wolfson said, "some of your colleagues were explicitly urging Senator Obama to attack Senator Clinton more directly. When he attacked her character, this was seen as a good thing. For some time, we did not respond in kind. But at some point, you need to set the record straight."

David Corn, now with Mother Jones, sees an anger-driven campaign:

"On Monday, Clinton called Obama a 'talker' not a 'doer' and a purveyor of 'false hopes.' She mocked his candidacy: 'How did running for president become a qualification for being president?' On Tuesday, the Clinton campaign suggested that Obama's campaign was mounting dirty tricks against Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire.

"This is much tougher an attack than anything Obama has hurled at her--and he has been critical of Clinton . . . And it shows--take your pick--either the meanness or toughness of Clinton and her posse. I lean toward characterizing it as the former.

"When talking to Clintonites in recent days, I've noticed that they've come to despise Obama. I suppose that may be natural in the final weeks of a competitive campaign when much is at stake. But these people don't need any prompting in private conversations to decry Obama as a dishonest poser. They're not spinning for strategic purposes. They truly believe it.

"And other Democrats in Washington report encountering the same when speaking with Clinton campaign people. 'They really, really hate Obama,' one Democratic operative unaffiliated with any campaign, tells me. 'They can't stand him. They talk about him as if he's worse than Bush.' What do they hate about him? After all, there aren't a lot of deep policy differences between the two, and he hasn't gone for the jugular during the campaign. 'It's his presumptuousness,' this operative says. 'That he thinks he can deny her the nomination. Who is he to try to do that?' You mean, he's, uh, uppity? 'Yes.' A senior House Democratic aide notes, 'The Clinton people are going nuts in how much they hate him. But the problem is their narrative has gone beyond the plausible.' "

Newsweek blogger Andrew Romano takes umbrage at Hillary, saying of the back-and-forth, "Now the fun part starts."

"Say what? Politicos recognize that 'attacking' opponents is a necessary part of the nomination process (even if voters, who typically inveigh against negativity while allowing it to color their perceptions of the candidates, don't always agree). But 'fun'? Not so much."

Hold on--it's certainly fun for reporters!

"Whether a slip of the tongue or a revealing glimpse at Hillary's true colors, expressing joy, rather than resignation, at dissing a fellow Dem gave Obama a priceless opportunity to reinforce the caricature of Clinton as a conniving, calculating pol. 'This presidential campaign isn't about attacking people for fun, it's about solving people's problems,' Obama said in a statement."

At Real Clear Politics, Jay Cost says Clinton has stooped too low:

"Generally speaking, it is unusual for a front-running, prestigious candidate like Hillary Clinton to attack her opponents. Usually, candidates in her position wait until they are attacked -- as, for instance, Giuliani did in the CNN/YouTube debate. Obama has been drawing contrasts with Clinton, for sure - but the intensity of Clinton's response was quite unprovoked. This is rare.

"On one level, I can appreciate the logic of attacking Obama. One of my favorite things about the Clinton campaign is that it has essentially turned Hillary's negatives into positives. They have not tried to reshape her into a warm and cuddly politician. Instead - they have done what John Ellis noted last month. 'She's a fighter. She's a scraper. She plays politics like it's a blood sport - and she fights for you, Democrats!' . . .

"In light of this strategy, doesn't she have to attack Obama? He is, after all, threatening her position. He is drawing contrasts that don't favor her. He's being subtle about it, but he is attacking her. Doesn't she have to respond to him, given the hook of her campaign? If she can't knock this featherweight around, how is she going to take on the GOP heavyweight?"

The problem, says Cost, is that "her assault has been clumsy."

Weekly Standard blogger Richelieu says Obama is playing rope-a-dope:

"I've thought that as Obama rises in Iowa, Hillary would lose it, go on the attack, and fall right into Obama's spider web. It appears to be happening. Obama's (smart) bet is that in this election people want to change the style of politics, not just the faces in Washington. Hillary kicking and scratching away at Obama . . . is exactly the Old School Hillary voters don't want.

"Obama knows this. He wants Clinton to attack and become the old-politics foil he needs. While Clinton flails away and sinks further in the quicksand of a change election, Obama will tisk-tisk her and continue delivering his sermons."

Americablog's John Aravosis is one of the few to question whether Barack has what it takes:

"Were Obama to win the Democratic nomination, could he win the national election? I'm constantly surprised by Republicans I meet who really like Obama. I think he has great cross-over potential for picking up Republican votes. But, there are some potential hurdles. To what degree will Obama's race be a problem with some voters? And does Obama, or his team, have the experience to take on the Republican attack machine? Just look what the Republicans did to John Kerry. Say what you will about Hillary, but her people know how to fight."

Huckabee is getting pummeled for saying on Tuesday that he hadn't heard about the NIE downgrading Iran as a nuclear threat. Dick Polman goes nuclear:

"It speaks volumes about the fluidity (and quality) of the Republican race that the hottest candidate in the pack is a guy who (a) doesn't believe in evolution, and (b) doesn't have a shred of foreign policy expertise - nor, apparently, the antennae to monitor key foreign policy developments.

"The (a) factor clearly isn't hurting Mike Huckabee as he trolls successfully for religious conservative voters in Iowa. But if his candidacy truly takes off, that pesky (b) factor could be a big problem for him down the road. I'll say why in a moment, but first, let's look at the (b) factor in action. Last night, Huckabee had dinner with some reporters in Des Moines.

"OK, I understand that Huckabee has been very busy this week . . . and I understand that he is still operating his campaign on a shoestring and therefore probably doesn't have foreign policy briefers at his elbow. But still. Imagine the laughter on the right if a Democratic candidate had confessed to being clueless about this development."

Meanwhile, Murray Waas has some documents that he says show that Huckabee, as Arkansas governor, aggressively pushed for early release of a rapist who went on to rape and murder another woman. The documents include a letter from one of Wayne Dumond's past victims, saying she feared he would strike again. But Marc Ambinder says the state parole board ultimately made the decision (though Huckabee had planned to commute Dumond's sentence).

The NYT has a big piece on Huckabee's pastoral roots: "Mr. Huckabee risks scorn from secular voters for defending the biblical creation story against Darwin, but faces accusations from some fellow Christians that he is soft on a range of issues, including liberal thinking in his own denomination."

In the wake of the NIE saying Iran hasn't been pursuing nuclear weapons for four years, Josh Marshall deconstructs Bush:

"Oh, for the days when the need to parse presidential language was only a matter of distinguishing different kinds of sex acts. Now it's necessary to hold the president to account for starting wars, bamboozling the country and causing untold numbers of deaths.

"We appear to know now that the Iranians shuttered their nuclear weapons program in 2003. The president apparently had strong indications this was the case back as far as last summer and the intelligence became progressively more clear in the fall. And yet here he was through most of the fall escalating his rhetoric against Iran and rattling the sabers for a potential military confrontation.

"Yet, as several readers have noted, when you look back at his speeches, there's evidence that the president was shifting his terms because he knew that the intelligence on which his push for war was based was likely too collapse.

"If you go back to his October 17th press conference, the one where he spoke of 'World War III' he changes his wording. It's no longer the need to prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb. Now it's the necessity of ' preventing them from hav[ing] the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.'

"That's the tell. That change is no accident."

What about Bill Clinton saying he was against the war from the beginning? Discussing the flap over his recent remarks on whether he originally opposed the war, he said: "Well, I regret that they were falsely represented by the press, who wants to make it a political story."

Leaving aside that it is a political story when a former president is campaigning for a wife who wants to be president, Clinton cites a pre-war statement that the weapons inspectors should be given time to do their job.

The biggest media newsmakers in the third quarter, says the Project for Excellence in Journalism, were Bush (513 stories), Larry Craig (293), Hillary (220), Michael Vick (162) and O.J. (153). The only other presidential candidates in the top 10 were Obama (110 stories) and Fred Thompson (101).

Paul Krugman takes his NYT colleague Kit Seelye to task for writing:

" Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan group. . .

"Is it really possible for a veteran reporter to believe that AEI is nonpartisan? Not even a qualifier, like 'right-leaning' or 'free-market-oriented'?"

I would agree that "nonpartisan" doesn't quite do it.

With all the mentions of the JFK religion speech before Mitt Romney holds forth on Mormonism today, I thought people might want to see a bit of the video. I confess to having utterly missed its significance. I was 7 at the time.

The liberal blogosphere continues to express outrage at Time's Joe Klein over an error that he made. And there is no disagreement that he made an error.

The controversy began when Klein was writing about the domestic surveillance legislation, or FISA. When Democrats objected to his take, Klein wrote on Time's Swampland blog:

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right (ADD: about this minor detail of a bill that will never find its way out of the Congress)."

Salon's Glenn Greenwald, a Klein critic and leader of the charge against him on this issue, said the so-called minor detail "was the entire basis of his smear against House Democrats."

Soon afterward, Joe beat a partial retreat:

"I may have made a mistake in my column this week about the FISA legislation passed by the House, although it's difficult to tell for sure given the technical nature of the bill's language and fierce disagreements between even moderate Republicans and Democrats on the Committee about what the bill actually does contain. Democrats say that I was wrong to report that the bill includes a FISA court review of individual foreign terrorist targets who might communicate with U.S. persons, although it does include an annual 'basket' review of procedures used by U.S. intelligence agencies to target foreign suspects. The Republican Committee staff disagrees and says my reporting is correct.

"I have to side with the Democrats. I reported as fact a provision of the bill that seems to be disputable, to say the least. Clearly, I didn't do sufficient vetting of the facts."

The following appeared in his next magazine column:

"Correction: I was wrong to write last week that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would require a court approval of individual foreign surveillance targets. The bill does not explicitly say that. Republicans believe it can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't."

Not a shining moment in journalism, but at least he owned up to it.

When I called Klein to ask about this, he said: "I made a mistake, I corrected it and it's over."

But Greenwald reported this week that Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, a member of the intelligence committee, submitted a letter to Time disputing Klein's account, and that Time would not run it.

I had a hard time understanding Time's stance. Shouldn't people who feel they have been wronged be given space to respond?

A Time spokeswoman told me the magazine hadn't received the letter--even though Feingold's office insisted that it was sent--and contacted the senator to get a copy after the controversy heated up. The letter will run in the next issue, saying in part:

"Klein called the Democrats 'tone-deaf' for acting on the demands of the American people that we bring the Iraq war to a close. And he says we are 'well beyond stupid,' but he got most of the facts wrong about the debate over changing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)."