Ticket-Sharing Talk Dominates Day's Campaign Activity
Obama Accuses Clinton of Gamesmanship, Emphasizes His Lead

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 11, 2008

COLUMBUS, Miss., March 10 -- Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama hardly sounded like potential running mates Monday, with Obama accusing his rival of "gamesmanship" and the campaigns sparring over who is more qualified to be commander in chief.

A day before the Mississippi primary, which Obama is favored to win, he rejected Clinton's idea that he become the vice presidential nominee on a ticket her husband described last week as "an almost unstoppable force." The senator from Illinois said the Clintons' talk was designed to disguise his lead in the nomination fight and convince fence-sitters that they could vote for Clinton and get Obama, too.

"First of all, with all due respect, I've won twice as many states as Senator Clinton," Obama said to cheers here. "I've won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton. So, I don't know how somebody who's in second place is offering the vice presidency to somebody who's in first place."

Obama also said, with evident delight, that the Clintons' notion undermines their central challenge to his candidacy -- that he is not prepared to be president.

"I don't understand," Obama told the crowd at the Mississippi University for Women. "If I'm not ready, how is it you think I would be such a great vice president?"

To emphasize his point, Obama cited a CBS News interview in May 1992, when candidate Bill Clinton said that the most important criterion for the vice presidency was "someone who would be a good president if, God forbid, something happened to me a week after I took office."

Obama said: "You all know the okey-doke, when someone's trying to bamboozle you, when they're trying to hoodwink you. You can't say that -- 'He's not ready on Day One unless he's willing to be your vice president, then he's ready on Day One.' "

The duel over the Democrats' readiness to lead the nation in a time of war has become a critical subtext as the party seeks a nominee to face Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner of war in Vietnam who counts national security as his strong suit.

The Clinton camp contends that Obama is untested. His campaign charges that Clinton showed poor judgment when she voted to authorize the Iraq war and backed President Bush's more recent effort to challenge Iran's Republican Guard, which Obama on Monday called "saber rattling."

Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson on Monday said that Obama has not proved his ability to be president, but that he could by the time Clinton would choose a running mate -- by August's Democratic National Convention in Denver.

"Senator Obama has not passed the commander-in-chief test," Wolfson said, adding: "We have a long time between now and Denver." An invitation to become vice president, he said, "is not something that she would rule out at this point."

Asked what Obama could do to prove his worth by August, Wolfson avoided the question.

Clinton aides -- and even some worried Obama supporters -- believe Obama's lead in the pledged delegate count may not be enough. Neither candidate is likely to win the 2,025 delegates necessary to seal the nomination, meaning that the 796 party officials and elected Democrats known as superdelegates could decide the nominee.

Clinton's campaign has worked to frame the race as anything but decided. Although Obama aides say the talk of an Obama vice presidential spot is just a tactic, her advisers insist that the idea of a Clinton-Obama ticket is genuine. "That may be where this is headed," she said last week.

It is not unusual for a nominee to choose as a running mate a former campaign rival. In 1980, Ronald Reagan selected George H.W. Bush as his running mate, despite Bush's primary-fight dismissal of Reagan's tax and budget policies as "voodoo economics." More recently, then-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina joined the ticket of rival Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004.

Obama and Clinton have become fierce adversaries in the past 13 months, and in recent weeks they have attacked one other more directly as each looks for an edge.

A Clinton campaign advertisement late last month asked voters whom they would trust to answer a ringing White House telephone at 3 a.m. The effort to raise doubts about the first-term senator was viewed as a contributing factor in Obama's losses in Ohio and Texas last week.

"The reason I'm running to be commander in chief," Obama said Monday, "is because I believe that the most important thing when you answer that phone call at 3 in the morning is what kind of judgment you have, not how long you've been in Washington. . . . And I believe that I have shown better judgment than Senator Clinton."

The vice presidency came up repeatedly Monday at a news conference called by Obama's campaign to showcase former military leaders backing him. Clifford Alexander Jr., a former secretary of the Army, said that "people of all backgrounds -- white, black, Latino -- all see this is more surrealistic than any other sense."

"There's something of an implied compliment, as well," said Richard Danzig, secretary of the Navy during the Clinton administration. "It's nice to think Senator Clinton thinks Senator Obama's clearly qualified to sit a heartbeat away from the presidency."

The message sent by the Clinton camp during an earlier conference call with reporters was not so complimentary. Painting Obama as unseasoned and unpredictable on national security, two retired generals and a retired admiral spoke of Clinton's "strength of character," "resolve" and "courage of conviction."

Lt. Gen. Joe Ballard said he grew up in Louisiana, where hands-on experience is "very, very important."

"Just because you recognize a cow doesn't mean you know how to milk it," Ballard said. He said voters assessing Clinton will "know exactly what they're going to get."

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), a retired Navy admiral elected to Congress in 2006, said Clinton has a "consistently thoughtful and deliberative approach" to Iraq. More than once, he said Clinton would bring home U.S. troops at the rate of one or two brigades a month, to make sure that troops left behind are protected and that Iraq is headed toward a political solution.

Obama has pledged to withdraw troops at the same rate for the same reason. He has said that all combat troops would be withdrawn within 16 months of his inauguration and that he would refine his plans after consulting with military commanders, as Clinton has also vowed to do.

Obama finished in Columbus with a reference to the Clintons' suggestion of the vice presidency.

"This kind of gamesmanship is exactly the kind of doublespeak, double talk, that Washington is very good at, that people who spend a lot of time in Washington have a lot of experience at," Obama said. "But it's not going to solve the problems of the country."

Staff writer Jonathan Weisman in Washington contributed to this report.