Democratic presidential candidates lined up before their debate. From left, Senator Chris Dodd, former Senator John Edwards, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico.
The three leading Democratic candidates engaged in their most spirited clash of the 2008 presidential campaign in a debate last night, challenging one other about cutting off money for the Iraq war and about voting to authorize military action in the first place.
Former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina assailed Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama by name for “standing quiet” on the recent Iraq war spending bill and not insisting on a timetable to withdraw United States troops. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama ultimately voted against the bill because it lacked the timetable Mr. Edwards wanted.
“They went quietly to the floor of the Senate, cast the right vote, but there is a difference between leadership and legislating,” Mr. Edwards said during the debate at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H.
Asked to “name names” by the debate moderator, the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, Mr. Edwards said: “Senator Clinton and Senator Obama did not say anything about how they were going to vote until they appeared on the floor of the Senate and voted.”
With that, Mr. Obama, and to a lesser extent Mrs. Clinton, pushed back aggressively against Mr. Edwards, and in doing so gave viewers a first opportunity to size up the rivals’ contrasting positions, political styles and combat techniques.
Mr. Obama said quickly that he believed it was “important to lead,” and then took a shot at Mr. Edwards for being, as a senator in 2002, a full-throated advocate of military threats against Iraq and a supporter of the Senate resolution that year authorizing military force.
“John, the fact is, is that I opposed this war from the start. So you are about four and a half years late on leadership on this issue,” said Mr. Obama, who has campaigned on his firm opposition to the war since 2002.
Mrs. Clinton did not respond directly to Mr. Edwards’s riposte, instead seeking to rise above it and follow her long-standing strategy of keeping the onus of the war on the Bush administration and not on the Democrats.
“I think it’s important particularly to point out, this is George Bush’s war — he is responsible for this war,” Mrs. Clinton said. “He started the war. He mismanaged the war. He escalated the war. And he refuses to end the war.”
The event was a stark contrast to the previous debate among the Democratic candidates, in which Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards largely shied away from confronting one other.
At one point, Mrs. Clinton drew Mr. Edwards’s fire when she tried to minimize the differences between the two of them on Iraq by saying that he was fighting from the outside and she, as a current senator, from within Congress to put pressure on both the Bush administration and the Iraqi government.
“The differences among us are minor — the differences between us and the Republicans are major,” Mrs. Clinton said.
Mr. Edwards — who has apologized for his 2002 vote, while Mrs. Clinton has not — replied that there were distinctions among the Democratic rivals.
“I think there is a difference between making very clear, when the crucial moment comes on Congress ending this war, what your position is, and standing quiet,” Mr. Edwards said. He added that it was important that presidential candidates “be honest to the country” about their positions on Iraq, prewar and now; he complimented Mr. Obama but said nothing about Mrs. Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, side-stepped a direct question about whether she made a mistake voting in 2002 for military force in Iraq when she had not read the classified National Intelligence Estimate that fall that laid out details about Iraqi capabilities and prewar intelligence.
“I feel like I was totally briefed, I knew all of the arguments that were being made by everyone from all directions,” she said.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards also argued, in light of the recently uncovered plot to attack Kennedy International Airport, that more steps had to be taken against terrorist cells. Mr. Obama said the Bush administration’s strategy to thwart terrorism in the United States was not a success, while Mr. Edwards said the war on terror was simply a slogan of the administration’s to justify controversial activities.
“What this global war on terror bumper sticker — political slogan, that’s all it is, it’s all it’s ever been — was intended to do was for George Bush to use it to justify everything he does. The ongoing war in Iraq; Guantánamo; Abu Ghraib; spying on Americans; torture; none of those things are O.K.. They are not the United States of America,” Mr. Edwards said.
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