Obama, Edwards Fight Over 'Change'

"Hope is not blind optimism," the senator from Illinois said at campaign events this week. "It's not ignoring the enormity of the task before us or the roadblocks that stand in our path. Yes, the lobbyists will fight us. Yes, the Republican attack dogs will go after us in the general election. Yes, the problems of poverty and climate change and failing schools will resist easy repair. I've watched legislation die because the powerful held sway and good intentions weren't fortified by political will, and I've watched a nation get misled into war because no one had the judgment or the courage to ask the hard questions before we sent our troops to fight. I know this will be hard. I know it."

What Edwards sees as an epic battle, Obama sees as a "partisan food fight" by political insiders who have lost touch with the real world. In front of an overflow crowd in Coralville on Friday, he answered Edwards in a mocking tone. "We don't think Barack is angry or confrontational enough to bring about change," Obama said as the crowd laughed. "He says he might actually talk to some of the folks who we need to defeat, and so we can't trust that he's going to be a fighter for you.

"Let me tell you something, Iowa: I don't need a lecture on how to bring about change. Because I've been bringing about change my entire adult life. I didn't just wait until campaign season. . . . I've made choices."

In a veiled reference to Edwards's lucrative career as a trial lawyer, Obama noted that he had turned down high-paying jobs at law firms to work as a community organizer and a civil rights lawyer. The Obama campaign also circulated a fact sheet on statements by Edwards that suggest he once held a more accommodating view of Washington special interests. In November 2002, he was quoted telling a Fortune global forum: "No one here can be blamed for taking aggressive advantage of legal holes in our tax law. Doing the most you can under the law to create profit for your shareholders is your job."

In 1992, Bill Clinton was running against an incumbent president, but he also faced rivals including former California governor Jerry Brown and billionaire H. Ross Perot, anti-establishment candidates with a populist streak whose appeal underscored a deep restlessness across party lines. "I can tell you that all across that state, in the biggest cities and the small, rural areas, there is the same yearning for fundamental change in this country that I sensed when I first set foot in the snows of New Hampshire," Clinton said in Boston in April 1992.

This year, the frustration is far more palpable, but the stakes also are higher, given the Iraq war and the backdrop of a far more fragile and complicated world. But Clinton's argument remains fresh. "The truth is, you can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience," Obama now tells audiences at each event. "Mine is rooted in the real lives of real people, and it will bring real results if we have the courage to change. I believe deeply in those words. But they are not mine. They were Bill Clinton's in 1992, when Washington insiders questioned his readiness to lead."

Newly public documents filed with the Federal Election Commission this week could undermine Edwards's claim to the outsider's mantle. Those filings showed a hefty infusion of private money to the efforts of Alliance for a New America, a group that is promoting Edwards's candidacy.

The filing shows that on Dec. 19, the group received $495,000 from Oak Spring Farms LLC, a corporate entity operating from an upscale hotel on Central Park South in New York City. Land records and other documents trace the Oak Spring corporation to Alexander Forger, a Manhattan trust lawyer. Forger holds a power of attorney for Rachel Lambert Mellon, 97. Mellon, known as "Bunny," is the widow of Paul Mellon (who owned a home in Virginia known as Oak Spring Farms) and daughter-in-law of industrialist Andrew Mellon. The same Oak Springs group made a $250,000 contribution to the Edwards-affiliated One America group in 2006.

A message left at Forger's office was not been returned. The New York Sun reported that he said: "I'm simply acting on behalf of somebody else."

While Mellon's involvement in the decision to donate to the Edwards campaign is unknown, published reports and federal election records show that Forger has been a major supporter of Edwards's candidacy. Crain's Business Journal reported in February that Forger and "a group of prominent New York lawyers" hosted a fundraiser for him at Essex House -- the Central Park South address where his office is located.

Forger has also personally donated $4,600 to Edwards's campaign, FEC records show. Alliance for a New America reported in the same FEC filing that it had purchased $798,797 worth of television advertising.

Staff writer Matthew Mosk in Washington contributed to this report.