Obama Sharpens His Tone

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Obama Says McCain is Better than Bush

At a town hall meeting in Reading, Pa. on Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama says that he, Clinton and McCain would each be a better choice for president than George W. Bush.

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"Given how much they've thrown at us, and the all-out effort the Obama campaign has made to win, we don't believe that the margin matters that much any more -- just who comes out on top," Garin said.

Obama's advisers dispute that notion, saying that if they hold Clinton's margin down well below her 10-point win in Ohio a month ago, she will have failed to do what she needs. They also said their aggressive ads this weekend are an attempt to avoid the mistakes of earlier campaigns, when attacks from the Clinton campaign stalled Obama's progress.

"Hillary has a track record of doing a large amount of negatives in the last 72 hours of all these major state battles," noted one Obama official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about strategy. "Instead of getting beat up and not pushing back, this time we are on the offensive."

Obama officials said they expect Clinton to win on Tuesday, but their goal is to prevent her from winning the kind of double-digit victory she secured in Ohio, which slowed Obama's march toward the nomination.

From start to finish, almost everything about the campaign Obama has run in Pennsylvania has been strikingly different from earlier contests.

He and his advisers came off the defeat in Ohio and the loss in the popular vote in Texas on March 4 determined to rewrite their script -- de-emphasizing huge rallies for smaller events and stepping up informal campaign stops at diners, bars, bowling alleys and ice cream shops to give the campaign a more down-to-earth feel.

Obama gained ground in the polls, but two controversies -- one involving his former pastor's incendiary, anti-American comments after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the senator's remarks about the bitterness of small-town Pennsylvanians -- raised fears that his progress might have stalled.

After Wednesday's debate, in which Obama fielded tough questions from Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, the senator began the final weekend seeking to regain the offensive. He drew a stark contrast with Clinton and emphasized to voters the choice they face on Tuesday.

The new language began to emerge in downtown Philadelphia Friday night before the biggest crowd of his campaign: a sea of 35,000 people, stretching across three blocks in front of Independence Hall.

In the written text of the speech, he compared his mission to reform Washington to the Founding Fathers' quest to throw off the "tyranny" of the British Empire. He drew a contrast with Clinton that was clearer and more crisp than in debate appearances or previous campaign speeches. Compared to what was coming, the language was still somewhat restrained.

"Senator Clinton is a tenacious opponent and a committed public servant," Obama said. "But her message comes down to this -- we can't really change the say-anything, do-anything, special-interest-driven game in Washington , so we might as well choose a candidate who really knows how to play it." He also depicted her as a political opportunist: "She's taken different positions at different times on issues as fundamental as trade and even war to suit the politics of the moment."

On Saturday, during his whistle-stop train tour, Obama steadily toughened his script. "She seems to have a habit of saying whatever it is that folks want to hear," Obama told a crowd in Paoli. "I try to talk honestly about how we're going to solve problems."

In Downington, he said, "The fact of the matter is, Senator Clinton essentially buys into the kind of politics that we've become accustomed to in Washington. . . . She's got the kitchen sink flying, the china flying, the buffet is coming at me."

By Harrisburg, he had added this line: "Senator Clinton would be vastly different than George Bush would be, but that's a very low bar."

Staff writer Anne E. Kornblut, traveling with Clinton, contributed to this report.