Clinton Camp Fires Back Over Column

November 18, 2007 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Election 2008, Hillary Clinton, Politics

Top Democratic rivals for president verbally battled each other on Saturday after conservative columnist Robert Novak asserted front-runner Hillary Clinton claimed to have damaging information about Barack Obama.

The Clinton campaign denied the accusation, saying Obama’s reaction to the vaguely worded column by Robert Novak played into Republican hands and showed the Illinois senator’s lack of political savvy.

Obama’s team later said they took the Clinton campaign at its word but bristled at the idea they fell for Republican tricks and should not have fought back against “smear politics” in the race for the presidency in the November 2008 election.

Obama, a first-term senator seeking to portray himself as an alternative to traditional Washington politics, seized on the article and said Clinton should either come forward with any information she has or repudiate Novak’s column.

“She of all people, having complained so often about ‘the politics of personal destruction,’ should move quickly to either stand by or renounce these tactics,” Obama said in his initial statement.

He called the column “a shameless item” aimed at smearing him through “innuendo and insinuation.”

Clinton’s camp quickly fired back.

“A Republican-leaning journalist runs a blind item designed to set Democrats against one another. Experienced Democrats see this for what it is. Others get distracted and thrown off their games,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said in a statement.

“We have no idea what Mr. Novak’s item is about and reject it totally.”