Sen. Barack Obama began a four-day campaign swing of Iowa this week on the heels of a Newsweek poll that showed him leading his Democratic rivals in the early caucus state. The Illinois senator specifically focused on the war in Iraq, with this week marking the fifth anniversary of his first speech against the war.
The events kicked off not in Iowa, but in Illinois, where the senator gave a major foreign policy address Tuesday at DePaul University in Chicago. After the speech, he flew to the Hawkeye State.
“I worried that Iraq’s history of sectarian rivalry could leave us bogged down in a bloody conflict,” “Obama said in his speech on Tuesday. “And I believed the war would fan the flames of extremism and lead to new terrorism. So I went to the rally. And I argued against a ‘rash war’ — a ‘war based not on reason, but on politics’ — ‘an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.’”
Obama was introduced by Ted Sorenson, President Kennedy’s former speechwriter. Sorenson also travelled to several events in Iowa with the senator, likening him to his old boss.
“He compared Kennedy’s secret negotiations with the Soviets to quell the crisis with Obama’s stated willingness — criticized by Hillary Clinton — to meet with the country’s foes without preconditions in his first year in office,” wrote Alec MacGillis of the Washington Post. “And he compared Kennedy’s refusal to take the advice of his military advisers to invade Cuba to Obama’s early opposition to the war in Iraq, the day’s campaign focus.”
Obama’s Iowa swing included foreign policy addresses in Des Moines and Coralville on Tuesday and town meetings in Iowa City and Washington on Wednesday. He has several more campaign stops scheduled in the state on Thursday and Friday.
But Obama’s foreign policy push may have been upstaged by the news that rival Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., raised more money than the Illinois senator in the third quarter of fund raising. On Tuesday, Clinton reported garnering roughly $27 million for her campaign coffers. Only a day earlier, Obama released his own numbers, which totaled roughly $20 million. In an e-mail to supporters, campaign manager David Plouffe said the campaign had reached its goal of getting 500,000 donations from 350,000 individual donors.
“The American people by and large have not yet tuned into this election,” Plouffe wrote. “But among those who have gotten involved, Barack Obama has inspired record numbers to take ownership of this campaign.”
The campaign’s elation, however, was short-lived.
“The revelation of Mrs. Clinton’s numbers was exquisitely timed: she released her numbers a day after he did, allowing his campaign to bask in expected glory — only to have the bubble burst [a day later],” wrote Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times. “The results have to come as a psychological blow to the Obama camp, as a sign that his appeal may be ebbing, along with faith that he would be the party’s best standard-bearer.”
Indeed, Obama also got some bad news in the form of new national polls this week. A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Clinton has a 33-point lead over Obama among Democratic voters, her largest margin yet. Clinton garnered 53 percent of the support, with Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards trailing at 20 percent and 13 percent respectively.
“Today’s veto of this bipartisan plan shows a callousness of priorities that is offensive to the ideals we hold as Americans,” he said.
Obama also reacted to a Thursday New York Times article that said the Bush administration had authorized using enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects.
“Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them,” he said. “It’s time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation.”
Obama also made an appearance on Tyra Banks’ talk show this week. Check out a clip here:
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