By JEFF ZELENY and PATRICK HEALY
New York Times
February 1, 2008

LOS ANGELES — Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama met for debate here Thursday, sitting side by side and sharing a night of smiles, friendly eye-catching and gentle banter. Cordial as the encounter was, the candidates did not mask their own divisions, even as they previewed the attacks one of them will ultimately make against a Republican rival.

Still, it was almost as if the battle was to see which of them could outnice the other.

At the end of the nearly two-hour encounter, as the audience of Democrats and Hollywood celebrities rose to its feet at the Kodak Theater, Mr. Obama held Mrs. Clinton's chair as she rose. The two rivals, almost hugging, held each others' elbows and whispered in one another's ear, offering a striking image that captured the tenor of the debate.

"When we started off, we had eight candidates on this stage. We are now down to two," Mr. Obama said. "I think one of us two will end up being the next president of the United States."

Gone were the sharp and sometimes personal attacks that have characterized a year's worth of debates, particularly a combative session last week in South Carolina, which both sides conceded had tarnished their images.

Still, the candidates were at pains to lay out their differences on issues like national health care, the Iraq war and experience in their last appearance together before voters in more than 20 states weigh in Tuesday on the presidential nominating fight.

As she has through much of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton found herself defending her 2002 Senate vote to authorize war against Iraq — a position that has been enduringly unpopular with Democrats. The vote has forced her to discuss her shifting stands on Iraq instead of the antiwar principle she has sought to embrace in the campaign.

"I think now we have to look at how we go forward," she said. "There will be a great debate between us and the Republicans, because the Republicans are still committed to George Bush's policy."

Mr. Obama, given his opposition to the war from 2002 onward, argued that he would be in a strongest position to challenge the Republican nominee over Iraq.

"I think it is much easier for us to have the argument when we have a nominee who says, 'I always thought this was a bad idea, this was a bad strategy,' " Mr. Obama said to applause. "They screwed up the execution of it in all sorts of ways."

"The question," he said, "is, can we make an argument that this was a conceptually flawed mission from the start, and that we need better judgment when we decide to send our young men and women into war?"

Still, unlike when they last met for debate, when they attacked each other over personal conduct as well as issues, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama aimed their sharpest words at Republicans.

Mrs. Clinton criticized President Bush over his stewardship of the economy, while Mr. Obama chided Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the two Republicans leading in their race, for supporting Bush-backed tax cuts for wealthy Americans after initially opposing them.

"Somewhere along the line the Straight Talk Express lost some wheels," Mr. Obama said, referring to one of Mr. McCain's political slogans.

Both lavished praise on John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who dropped out of the race this week and whose endorsement they are actively seeking.

Mr. Obama said he and Mr. Edwards were determined to fight special interests and big business. Mrs. Clinton twice noted early on that her universal health care plan — which, unlike Mr. Obama's, includes a requirement that all Americans have health care — was very similar to that of Mr. Edwards.

Mr. Obama countered that about "95 percent" of his plan and Mrs. Clinton's were the same, but that he believed his proposal went further to reducing costs.

But their tone Thursday night was largely friendly. Each candidate laughed agreeably and nodded at the other's remarks, and they praised each other at different points and looked ahead to the battle with the other party.

"They are more of the same," Mrs. Clinton said of the Republican candidates. "Neither of us, by looking at us, is more of the same — we will change our country."

Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton sidestepped a question about whether either would select the other as a running mate. Wolf Blitzer of CNN, the moderator, called it a "dream ticket" in the eyes of many Democrats. In fact, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have built up resentments toward each other over the campaign and seem unlikely to want to pair up for the general election.

"We've got a lot more road to travel," Mr. Obama said, "and so I think it's premature for either of us to start speculating about vice presidents." When pressed, he said, "I'm sure that Hillary would be on anybody's short list."

Mrs. Clinton responded in kind. "Well, I have to agree with everything Barack just said," she replied, to laughter from the audience.

Later, Mrs. Clinton was forced to fend off a question about her ability to "control" former President Bill Clinton from interfering in her administration should she become president in 2009, given his assertiveness on the campaign trail. (Mrs. Clinton has acknowledged that her husband has become "carried away" at times recently.)

"The fact is that I'm running for president, and this is my campaign," she said to applause. She added: "At the end of the day, it's a lonely job in the White House. And it is the president of the United States who has to make the decisions. And that is what I'm asking to be entrusted to do."

On one flash point — immigration — Mr. Obama cited his role in immigration reform legislation in Washington last year. He voiced his support for states giving driver's licenses to undocumented workers.

"People don't come here to drive, they come here to work," Mr. Obama said.

It was an issue that stirred controversy in a debate last year, which Mr. Obama sought to raise by pointing out that his rival gave "a number of different answers on this over the course of six weeks."

"Now she does have a clear position, but it took awhile," Mr. Obama said Thursday. "The only reason I bring that up is to underscore the fact that this is a difficult political issue."

It was the first dust-up of the evening between the candidates, occurring near the end of the first hour. Mrs. Clinton smiled and offered her reply.

"I just have to correct the record for one second," she said, explaining that she initially supported the concept of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants so she could help Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York, who was being criticized over the issue. Turning to Mr. Obama directly, she said: "You were asked the same question and could not answer it. So this is a difficult issue."

Asked by Mr. Blitzer whether she was "missing in action" during the immigration debate, Mrs. Clinton was quick to reject the suggestion.

"I cosponsored comprehensive immigration reform in 2004, before Barack came to the Senate," she said.

In a week where Senator Edward M. Kennedy endorsed the candidacy of Mr. Obama, as did Caroline Kennedy, Mrs. Clinton was asked why they had chosen her rival and whether she would represent the kind of change that would inspire a nation.

"I have the greatest respect for Senator Kennedy and the Kennedy family," Mrs. Clinton said. "I'm proud to have three of Bobby's kids supporting me — Bobby, Kathleen and Kerry supporting me."

She added, "I think having the first woman president would be a huge change for America and the world."

The candidates could not question one another in the debate, but took questions from viewers. A 38-year-old woman in South Carolina, who sent her question in by e-mail, said she had never voted for someone not named Bush or Clinton. She wondered how Mrs. Clinton would represent change.

"You have to make the case for yourself," Mrs. Clinton said. "And I want to be judged on my own merits. I don't want to be advantaged — or disadvantaged."

The debate also featured questions about the strengths of Senator McCain and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts — the two leading Republican presidential candidates. Asked about Mr. Romney's experience as a chief executive officer, Mr. Obama drew laughs when he reminded the audience that Mr. Romney has significantly outspent his rivals, investing millions of his own money.

"Mitt Romney hasn't gotten a very good return on his investment during this presidential campaign," Mr. Obama said, adding that he would match his financial management skills with Mr. Romney's. (Hours before the debate, Mr. Obama's campaign announced that he had raised $32 million in January alone.)

Not only was the debate much less contentious than Wednesday night's debate among the remaining Republican candidates, but it was also far more muted than recent Democratic debates — an obvious calculation on the part of both candidates, who have been criticized for being overly harsh and personal. Democratic leaders feared that the negative tone would carry over to the general election, tamping down voters' enthusiasm.

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January 4, 2008

The candidates have spent a year and tens of millions of dollars in Iowa, and Thursday night the first actual voters offered their first assessments. Some candidates and their strategists were hoping the caucuses and the New Hampshire primary next week would settle the race, weeding out the contenders for the two major parties' presidential nominations. Watching the campaign in cold, snowy and mostly empty Iowa, we were hoping for something else - that this year's Iowa-New Hampshire rush to judgment will be the last.

For all of Thursday night's drama, the results in Iowa did not
preclude a race going into New Hampshire, and, we hope, beyond - to South Carolina, Florida and the cluster of primaries on February 5. Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton, but she's got plenty of money left, and John Edwards got a boost. Mike Huckabee's win was unlikely to deter Mitt Romney or the Republicans who did not contest Iowa: John McCain and Rudolph Giuliani.

Keeping this race alive so significant numbers of Americans in more populated states can participate would begin to make up for the ludicrous spectacle of the past year, which enriched the television networks and the political consultants (some $300 million already spent) far more than it enriched the political dialogue. We hope both parties will wake up and end the undemocratic system in which the choice of a new president rests far too heavily on nonbinding votes in January by voters that don't necessarily represent the rest of the country.

We don't question the enthusiasm or the commitment of the people of Iowa and New Hampshire. But Iowa, where a huge turnout amounts to less than 10 percent of the population, is about 92 percent white, more rural and older than the rest of the nation. New Hampshire has a non-Hispanic white population of about 95 percent. Iowa's Democrats are more liberal and more protectionist than the nation's Democrats. Its Republicans are more conservative, and religiously driven, than the nation's Republicans. And yet, The Boston Globe reported that Mr. Romney spent $7 million on ads in Iowa. That's nearly $4 per registered voter.

We do believe that the time has long passed for both parties to not only break the Iowa-New Hampshire habit but also end the damaging race to be third, with states pushing their primaries closer and closer to New Year's Day.

Instead, the country should adopt a more sensible and more representative system of regional primaries, in which states are divided into regional groups that vote on a designated day. The honor of going first would rotate year to year among the regions. That would give a far broader range of American voters a say in this vitally important choice.

Make no mistake, there are choices to be made in this first election in many, many years in which both parties' nominations are being contested. Most of the Republican contenders (with the exception, most of the time, of Senator John McCain) offer the same kind of politics of division that has so polarized this nation over the last seven years. It is a politics that thrives on religious and social intolerance and fear.

Mr. Huckabee, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, cloaks himself in affability and Christianity. But he bullied Mr. Romney into pleading with religious conservatives to accept his Mormon faith as Christian enough for a Republican nominee and, after professing charity, has recently become a scourge of undocumented immigrants.

Fear often appears to be the only plank on which Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is standing, when you can tell where he is standing at all. Mr. Giuliani, who parlayed the 9/11 tragedy into a lucrative business and now speaks, bizarrely, of the "9/11 generation," has switched his views a dizzying number of times - on immigration, on abortion, on New York.

Almost as dizzying, in fact, as the pirouettes executed by Mr. Romney, who wants American voters to forget his record as governor of Massachusetts - where he endorsed gay marriage and reproductive choice - and believe what he says now that he wants to be president. Among Mr. Romney's tailored-for-the-campaign proposals is to double the size of the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which even President Bush knows must be closed.

All of the Republicans want to continue President Bush's disaster of a war in Iraq, including Mr. McCain. He, however, has taken a courageous stand for immigration reform, which seemed to doom his candidacy last year, and is a strong advocate of the need to confront global warming and to stop the abuse of prisoners in Mr. Bush's system of secret prisons.

The Democrats are united in their opposition to the war, but none have spelled out a persuasive plan for getting American troops home without setting off a wider conflagration.

Senator Obama generates enormous excitement with his youth, and his promises of change - even if it's not entirely clear what he intends to change or how. Senator Clinton, meanwhile, wavers between wanting to be seen as ready to serve as president because of her eight years in the White House with her husband - and trying to satisfy voters' yearnings for new ideas and new ways.

Mr. Edwards has a strong populist message, but it sounds a bit odd coming from a former tort lawyer and hedge fund executive who ran as a completely different person in 2004. One of his ads features an out-of-work Maytag employee who said Mr. Edwards promised his 7-year-old son: "I'm going to keep fighting for your daddy's job." We're still waiting for Mr. Edwards to explain how he, or any politician, can turn back the tide of economics and globalization. We'd prefer if he explained how to make it work for all Americans.

None of this has led us to a choice in the nominating contests, never mind for the presidency. The majority of Americans are in the same position. That's why they should be allowed to see and hear more of these candidates, and not have to settle for the judgments of the people of Iowa and New Hampshire.

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By PATRICK HEALY, January 4, 2008

DES MOINES - The Democratic and Republican establishments and their presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Governor Mitt Romney, were brought low in Iowa on Thursday night, shaken seriously by two national newcomers who won decisively on messages of insurgency and change.

The victors in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama for the Democrats and former Governor Mike Huckabee for the Republicans, are as far from the status quo as possible. One is the son of a Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother who entered the United States Senate just three years ago. The other is a former Baptist minister who was best known until recently for losing over 100 pounds and taking on the issue of childhood obesity.

The two winners burst the aura of strength and confidence that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Romney had tried to cultivate for months, and left both parties suddenly without a clear path to their nominating conventions, let alone November.

Mrs. Clinton's loss was especially glaring. Her central strategy for much of 2007 was to appear as the inevitable nominee, but Iowans shredded that notion. She tried in recent weeks to convince voters that another Clinton administration could be an agent of change, but Iowans clearly did not buy it.

Without question, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Romney have the money, the campaign apparatus and the legions of supporters to stay in the hunt for the nomination and to right their campaigns. But Mrs. Clinton's lackluster finish raises anew questions about her electability, and whether independent voters - twice as many of whom backed Mr. Obama over her - will ever come around to Mrs. Clinton.

And Mr. Romney, who outspent Mr. Huckabee 6 to 1 in television advertising in Iowa, now faces a far more crowded field of rivals in the New Hampshire primary who are eager to tear into his wounded candidacy

All the candidates now move to that primary on Tuesday, which Mrs. Clinton had tried to make a fire wall for her campaign, as it was for her husband's presidential candidacy in 1992, when he finished strongly in second place.

"If Hillary doesn't stop Obama in New Hampshire, Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee," said Robert Shrum, a Democratic consultant who was John Kerry's senior strategist in 2004.

Clinton advisers declined to say Thursday night if she would now pursue a different strategy against Mr. Obama. But a shift seems likely now that Mrs. Clinton's multilayered, sometimes contradictory message - offering an experienced hand, for example, but also running as a candidate who could bring change - fell flat in this first contest.

"We built a campaign for the long haul - we feel very good about our operation in New Hampshire, and polling has us up," said Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman. The danger for Mrs. Clinton, of course, is that those polls may not hold after the outcome in Iowa.

Further undercutting Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama peeled away broad swaths of women from her base of support, and the political potency of baby boomers fell apart in Iowa. Half of the Democrats under 45 said their first choice was Mr. Obama, according to a poll by Edison/Mitofsky of voters entering caucus sites.

At the same time, it was also historic that so many Iowa Democrats voted for an African-American man and a woman. For Mr. Obama, especially, the ratification of his candidacy by Democrats and independents in a predominantly white and rural state suggests that he may be able to build a broad and multiracial coalition in his bid for the White House.

The nomination fights will only intensify from now, though the steel that Mr. Huckabee will deploy in the battle is unclear. He seemed to come out of nowhere - a former governor who was so little known among Republicans that many of them could not even name the state he once led (Arkansas) - and turned from asterisk-status to giant-slayer in spite of a paltry political organization, slim dollars and a final week marked by gaffes.

As when Pat Robertson made a surprise second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses in 1988, Mr. Huckabee enjoyed substantial political support from evangelical Christians and took advantage of a muddled Republican presidential field to gain his 11th-hour victory.

For Mr. Romney, of Massachusetts, his loss will register as a deep blow to his candidacy - a failure bound to worry establishment Republicans and wealthy donors who have viewed him as their man. It will also energize and inspire Republicans who are backing Senator John McCain in the New Hampshire primary.

Mr. Romney's drive to the Republican nomination was supposed to begin with him looking formidable and confident coming out of Iowa. Mr. Romney, his wife and his sons planted themselves here for months and poured in money, including millions of his own; he now heads to New Hampshire clearly wounded and a target for even more rivals, like Rudolph W. Giuliani, former Senator Fred Thompson, and Mr. McCain, of Arizona.

Mr. Huckabee, a folksy and fairly plain-speaking politician with a sense of humor that many Iowans enjoyed, appealed to Republican caucusgoers who put a premium on a candidate's Christian faith, and who were deeply wary about seeing a Mormon, Mr. Romney, become president.

But Mr. Huckabee also struck many populist themes that have deep appeal to middle-class Iowans and farmers, promising to tailor his economic priorities to their needs and taking tough stands on a key issue here, immigration.

But Iowa voters are not New Hampshire voters, as Mr. Huckabee and his advisers are well aware. Devoutly religious voters do not exist in nearly the same numbers in the Granite State. And the fervent anti-tax sentiment among Republicans there is likely to clash with Mr. Huckabee's record of raising taxes in Arkansas.

"If Huckabee scares the Republican establishment and makes the party fear losing, you could see a rapid rallying around a second candidate," said Nelson Warfield, a Republican consultant not working for any candidate. Still, he said, "Nothing makes a man look like a leader more than a winner."

Mr. Robertson's Iowa victory in 1988 - when he came in second to Bob Dole and edged out the ultimate nominee, George H. W. Bush - gave him little bounce in New Hampshire, given the lack of a fervent evangelical base. "I'm going to be the nominee," Mr. Robertson said right after his victory, crediting God in particular with his success. But his fortunes faded after a drubbing soon after in New Hampshire.

Mr. Huckabee talked about God on the Iowa campaign trail, as well, but on Thursday night there was one other word that he - as well as Mr. Obama, Mr. Romney, Mrs. Clinton, former Senator John Edwards - discussed especially and emphatically: "change."

As Mr. Edwards put it, "the status quo lost and change won" in the caucuses. Mr. Obama and Mr. Huckabee repeated the words incessantly in their victory speeches, brandishing the word as a talisman that overcame Mrs. Clinton's decades of experience and Mr. Romney's leadership bona fides. Yet change was not only the political message; change was the two men themselves.

Marjorie Connelly contributed reporting.

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By ADAM NAGOURNEY
New York Times
January 1, 2008

DES MOINES - Iowa is packed with presidential candidates and hundreds of campaign aides, advisers and contributors. Twenty-five hundred representatives of news organizations have been granted credentials to cover the caucuses Thursday night, twice as many as in 2004. Rarely has a political event been so intensely anticipated as a decisive moment, at least on the Democratic side.

But what if it is not decisive?

What if at the end of Thursday, the three leading Democrats - former Senator John Edwards and Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama - are separated by a percentage point or two, leaving no one with the clear right of delivering a victory speech (or the burden of conceding)? A number of polls going into the final days have suggested that after all of this, the Democratic caucus on Thursday night could end up more or less a tie.

In truth, amid all the endless permutations of outcomes that are being discussed - can Mrs. Clinton, the putative front-runner, survive a third-place finish, or Mr. Edwards a second-place one? - aides are beginning to grapple with the frustrating possibility that all the time, money and political skill invested here might prove to be for naught when it comes to identifying the candidate to beat in the primaries and winnowing the top tier.

"It would be like a six-month trial and a hung jury," said David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. "I think it is really possible."

Rather than clarify the state of play and consolidate this crowded field a bit, an outcome like that would almost certainly muddle things further and potentially extend the time before Democrats know their nominee.

For different reasons, Iowa is not likely to determine much for the Republicans, either. Only Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, and Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, are going all-out here, and whatever happens between them, the Republican race already seems likely to go on at least until the cavalcade of primaries across the country on Feb. 5.

But for the leading Democrats, an inconclusive ending here would be a much more complicated result.

Because none of them would be judged a decisive loser, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama would all be able to go on to the New Hampshire primary next week, no questions asked. And you can bet on this: the other Democrats in the race - Senators Christopher J. Dodd and Joseph R. Biden Jr., Representative Dennis J. Kucinich and Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico - would feel less of the morning-after-Iowa pressure to pull out.

It would be hard for any candidate to play the "I beat expectations" game and claim some sort of chimerical victory, much the way Bill Clinton proclaimed himself the winner after coming in second in New Hampshire in 1992 - although Mr. Edwards, who for much of the year campaigned in the shadow of his two rivals, would no doubt try.

"Frankly, if there's a three-way tie, that changes the dynamics of what has been reported the entire year: that it's a two-person race," said Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, the Iowa campaign director for Mr. Edwards, who has put in more than a year preparing for this week. "It changes the way people look at the race, and they'll see it as a three-way race."

It is a good bet, in fact, that one candidate would try to claim a victory, even if it was by a single percentage point or less. Still, that is not likely to get him or her on the cover of Time or Newsweek (that would be the old-school way of measuring the political impact of winning in Iowa). The other two would be left fighting for the right of second place. And politics being politics, it is likely there would be a campaign trying to present a three-way tie as a victory.

Beyond that, New Hampshire, which for Democrats has seemed something like a stepchild in this year's nominating process given all the attention being paid to Iowa, would get a chance to have some real influence over the nomination. For 25 years, there has been debate and study about how the outcome in Iowa affects New Hampshire voters. This time around, because of the decision by the New Hampshire secretary of state, Bill Gardner, to set the primary on Jan. 8, voters will have just five days to examine the candidates and make their decision.

One of the bedrock political assumptions of the year - and certainly one that has informed Mrs. Clinton's campaign - is that winning Iowa and New Hampshire would set the table for sweeping the 20 or so states that vote on Feb. 5, the day when many Democrats believe that their contest will effectively be decided. But if Iowans end up being equally divided among what many party leaders view as an unusually strong cast of candidates, who is to say that voters in the Feb. 5 states won't be as well?

None of this is meant to suggest that such an outcome would mean that what has taken place here over the past year is insignificant. Quite the contrary. Watching these candidates, Democrats and Republicans, deliver their final speeches, take the last rounds of questions from Iowans and shake the hands of supporters one more time, it is apparent that most of them are much better at campaigning than they were a year ago.

Mr. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, an old Iowa caucus hand who has moved here to help out in the final days, said as much in explaining why he would be comfortable with even an inconclusive outcome. "The experience here in Iowa," he said, "has been tremendous for the entire campaign."

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By LESLIE WAYNE
New York Times
January 1, 2008

DES MOINES - Spurred by a recent Supreme Court decision, independent political groups are using their financial muscle and organizational clout as never before to influence the presidential race, pumping money and troops into early nominating states on behalf of their favored candidates.

Iowans have been bombarded over the last few days with radio spots supporting John Edwards that were paid for by a group affiliated with locals of the Service Employees International Union, which just kicked in $800,000 - on top of $760,000 already spent.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, rolled across Iowa on Monday in a customized black-and-gold bus emblazoned with his picture and the logo of the International Association of Firefighters, which has spent several hundred thousand dollars supporting him. And at campaign events in Iowa, backers in AFSCME union shirts turned out Monday to show their support for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. Those appearances come in addition to the union's $770,000 advertising campaign promoting her candidacy.

The groups are prohibited from coordinating their efforts with the campaigns. But the candidates, while often distancing themselves from these efforts, certainly benefit from their activities. Iowa airwaves have been filled with commercials from these groups as they take advantage of the June ruling that lifted a ban on broadcast messages from independent groups within 30 days of a primary or caucus.

Independent groups also act as a vehicle for negative advertising that campaigns are reluctant to engage in. The Club for Growth, for instance, has spent $700,000 so far, largely on broadcast spots here and in other early voting states that criticize Mike Huckabee's record on taxes while he was Arkansas governor, an effort that has received several hundred thousands of dollars from an Arkansas political rival of Mr. Huckabee, a Republican.

The shifting stand on abortion by Mitt Romney, a Republican former governor of Massachusetts, has come under attack in broadcast advertisements here and in New Hampshire from the Republican Majority for Choice, a group of Republican women who support abortion rights.

In the final two weeks before the caucuses on Thursday, independent groups have so far spent at least $5 million in Iowa, with much of the money benefiting the campaigns of Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton. During the last presidential primary election cycle, these groups spent nothing on advertising before the caucuses, largely because of the prohibition on such activity in the 30 days before nominating contests. But independent groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and MoveOn.org played a major role in the 2004 general election.

The June ruling, in a case involving a Wisconsin anti-abortion group, allowed television issue advertisements from third-party groups - whether unions, corporations or wealthy individuals - to run right up to an election day. Under the McCain-Feingold law, which limits the role of money in campaigns, these spots had to cease 30 days before a primary election and 60 days before a general one.

"This more permissive standard," said Kenneth Gross, a veteran campaign finance lawyer, "means there will be more money, more ads and more saturation."

Unlike national political parties and their candidates, many of these interest groups face no limits on how much they can take in from their contributors and often do not have to disclose their donors' names until after an election. As a result, it is difficult - if not impossible - to determine just how much money they are spending. While there is, ostensibly, an independent relationship between a campaign and these groups, restrictions on coordination between the two are considered so murky that they are often difficult to apply.

In Iowa, the efforts on behalf of or against the candidates involve not only television and radio advertisements, but also the nitty-gritty of a campaign: direct-mail brochures, bus tours, pep rallies, telephone calls, educational efforts to explain the caucuses, and traditional get-out-the-vote efforts. Independent groups pay for billboards, banners, yard signs, caps, T-shirts and mugs and set up Web sites on behalf of their favorite candidates, efforts that often look as though they were produced by the campaign itself.

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is the only leading Democrat who has not attracted support from any of these groups in Iowa. By contrast, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards are the biggest beneficiaries of independent efforts, largely because of the union support the two have garnered. And yet both candidates are proponents of stricter campaign finance rules.

Mr. Edwards, in particular, has made tightening such rules a cornerstone of his campaign, putting him in a delicate position as he denounces expenditures coming indirectly from some of his closest supporters, like locals of the service employees' union.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Edwards has called on the groups, known as 527s for the section of the tax code they fall under, to stop running advertisements supporting him. But he has said he will not ask them directly.

"I do not support 527 groups, Mr. Edwards said. "They are part of the law, but let me be clear: I am asking this group and others not to run the ads. I would encourage all the 527s to stay out of the political process."

Mr. Dodd is getting a spirited boost from the firefighters' association, which is traveling with him on a 23-city tour on a bus with an enormous picture of him and the union's logo on its side.

"You can see that bus from two miles away," said Harold Schaitberger, the union's president, who flew in from Washington to lead the effort for the 287,000-member union.

Mr. Schaitberger declined to say how much the group planned to spend, other than that it would be "a considerable sum."

The bus tour shows how the lines are blurred: a previous tour cost the union $100,000, while this one, using the same bus, is being paid for by the campaign. The union has also posted "hundreds" of four-foot-by-eight-foot Dodd signs, he said. Federal records show that the group also spent over $10,000 in the last few days on billboards and $102,000 on full-page advertisements in Iowa's 23 largest newspapers last Sunday.

Emily's List, a political action committee that supports women running as Democrats, is making a special effort for Mrs. Clinton. Its campaign is titled "You Go Girl!" and is directed at women who have never attended a caucus.

The group's own polling showed that Mrs. Clinton had a two-to-one lead among women who had not previously attended a caucus. As a result, that group, which Emily's List pared to 60,000 names, became the focus of its efforts with a direct-mail campaign, a phone bank and a "You Go Girl!" Web site. All efforts feature women with Midwestern accents explaining how the caucus works and urging them to support Mrs. Clinton.

"Getting someone who has not caucused to go out is the hardest effort," said Maren Hesla, director of the effort, which she says has cost $300,000 so far and "we're not done spending."

The Web site is also linked to a number of Google search terms. If an Iowan searches terms like "safe toys," "stocking stuffers" or "after-Christmas sale," a banner advertisement with the link to the Web site will appear.

Mrs. Clinton is also the beneficiary of a $770,000 television advertising campaign from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The spot features Iowa voters talking about how Mrs. Clinton can "start this job on Day 1," which is one of her campaign's themes. The union estimates that it will spend more than $1 million on this television campaign.

Mr. Edwards's efforts to distance himself from third-party efforts has not halted the ardor of some union groups campaigning on his behalf.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners has formed a group, Working for Working Americans, that has paid around $500,000 for television spots supporting Mr. Edwards. The advertisements focus on the issue of job loss and cite the closing of the Maytag factory in Newton, Iowa. They say Mr. Edwards would end the practice of giving tax breaks to companies that move jobs overseas, and urge voters to "give voice to your values" while showing pictures of Mr. Edwards. Federal records show money for the spots came from the union's general fund.

Mr. Edwards is also benefiting from more than $1.5 million from the Alliance for a New America, which has primarily been running a radio campaign in Iowa. While most of the money has come from service union locals, one big donation of $495,000 that came in last Friday was given by a longtime Edwards supporter.

The name of the donating entity is Oak Spring Farms, which lists its address as Central Park South in New York. The entity is a partnership between Rachel L. Mellon, the 96-year-old widow of Paul Mellon, and her lawyer, Alexander D. Forger. Oak Spring Farms had previously given $250,000 to Mr. Edwards's One America committee, a 527 committee he set up to fight poverty.

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October 12, 2007
New York Times
Editorial

What, Me Worry?

If anybody had a doubt about Republicans' detachment from the economic reality of most Americans, Fred Thompson, the former United States senator, set them straight as he opened Tuesday's Republican presidential debate: the economy, he declared, "is rosy."

He wasn't the only one in rose-colored denial or out of touch. Despite entreaties from their hosts, all the leading Republican candidates neatly overlooked Americans' fear of recession and the fallout from the meltdown in the housing market.

Watching the debate, it felt as if these candidates, or at least the front-runners, were living in an alternate universe. It's one where nothing but taxes can stop the ever upward growth of the American economy and where a problem hasn't been invented - millions of uninsured, America's dependency on Middle Eastern oil - that can't be dealt with through tax cuts, slashing government spending and regular, stiff doses of deregulation.

Forget a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade regime for carbon emissions - not that anybody mentioned global warming as a big problem. Forget expensive incentives to develop alternative energy sources. With everybody calling for lower taxes, Republicans were left with no way to address any problem except exhorting the private industry to show its resourcefulness.

The best brawl was over who had done more harm to his constituents: Rudolph Giuliani, who according to Mitt Romney increased spending by 2.8 percent a year when he was mayor of New York City, or Mr. Romney, who according to Mr. Giuliani raised taxes by 11 percent per capita when he was governor of Massachusetts.

All this bowing before the tax-slashing idol could be understood as a matter of political survival. But the economic arguments are nonsense, none more so than the claim - trumpeted by Mr. Giuliani and a revered tenet of his party - that lower tax rates will inevitably generate more tax revenues. That theory has been tested and failed, leading to enormous deficits during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Two years ago, the Congressional Budget Office published an analysis of the effect of a tax cut on economic growth and tax revenues. It found that even under the rosiest of assumptions, cutting taxes led, inevitably, to lower revenues and a bigger deficit. But perhaps those assumptions were not rosy enough for the Republican presidential candidates.

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August 13, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
PAUL KRUGMAN

Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your father's political campaign.

Last week, at one of Mitt Romney's "Ask Mitt" forums, a woman in the audience asked Mr. Romney whether any of his five sons are serving in the military and, if not, when they plan to enlist.

The candidate replied with a rambling attempt to change the subject, but near the end he let his real feelings slip. "It's remarkable how we can show our support for our nation," he said, "and one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected, because they think I'd be a great president."

Wow. The important point isn't the fact that Mr. Romney's sons aren't in uniform — although it is striking just how few of those who claim to believe that we're engaged in a struggle for our very existence think that they themselves should be called on to make any sacrifices. The point is, instead, that Mr. Romney apparently considers helping him get elected an act of service comparable to putting your life on the line in Iraq.

Yet the week's prize for most self-centered remark by a serious presidential contender goes not to Mr. Romney, but to his principal rival for the G.O.P. nomination.

Rudy Giuliani has lately been getting some long-overdue criticism for his missteps both before and after 9/11. For example, The Village Voice reports that he insisted that the city's emergency command center — which included a personal suite with its own elevator that he visited "often, even on weekends, bringing his girlfriend Judi Nathan there long before the relationship surfaced" — be within walking distance of City Hall. This led to the disastrous decision to locate the center in the World Trade Center, an obvious potential terrorist target.

At the same time, Mr. Giuliani is being attacked for his failure to take adequate precautions to protect those who worked on the cleanup at ground zero from the hazards at the site. Many workers have since been sickened by the dust and toxic materials.

For a politician whose entire campaign is based on the myth of his leadership that fateful day — as The Onion put it, Mr. Giuliani is running for "president of 9/11" — anything that challenges his personal legend is a big problem. So here's what Mr. Giuliani said last week in response: "I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers. ... I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Real ground zero workers, who were digging through the toxic rubble while Mr. Giuliani held photo ops, were understandably outraged. So the next day Mr. Giuliani tried to recover, claiming that "what I was trying to say yesterday is that I empathize with them because I feel like I have that same risk." But thanks to the wonders of YouTube, we can all watch Mr. Giuliani's actual demeanor as he delivered the original remarks. Empathy had nothing to do with it.

What's striking about these unintentional moments of self-revelation is how much Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani sound like the current occupant of the White House.

It has long been clear that President Bush doesn't feel other people's pain. His self-centeredness shines through whenever he makes off-the-cuff, unscripted remarks, from his jocular obliviousness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the joke he made last year in San Antonio when visiting the Brooke Army Medical Center, which treats the severely wounded: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch."

What's now clear is that the two men most likely to end up as the G.O.P. presidential nominee are cut from the same cloth.

This probably isn't a coincidence. Arguably, the current state of the Republican Party is such that only extreme narcissists have a chance of getting nominated.

To be a serious presidential contender, after all, you have to be a fairly smart guy — and nobody has accused either Mr. Romney or Mr. Giuliani of being stupid. To appeal to the G.O.P. base, however, you have to say very stupid things, like Mr. Romney's declaration that we should "double Guantanamo," or Mr. Giuliani's dismissal of the idea that raising taxes is sometimes necessary to pay for things like repairing bridges as a "Democratic, liberal assumption."

So the G.O.P. field is dominated by smart men willing to play dumb to further their personal ambitions. We shouldn't be surprised, then, to learn that these men are monstrously self-centered.

All of which leaves us with a political question. Most voters are thoroughly fed up with the current narcissist in chief. Are they really ready to elect another?

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ELECTION 2008

Democratic Presidential Candidates Propose Pragmatic Approaches to Universal Health Care To Avoid Pitfalls of 1990s Health Reform Effort

A number of Democratic presidential candidates -- including Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) -- support health care reform approaches "that borrow from the Massachusetts model," a law enacted last year in that state that "took key elements of the 1993 Clinton plan and made them practical politically," the Washington Post reports. Obama and Edwards have released plans to achieve expanded coverage using elements of the Massachusetts plan. Clinton has outlined an agenda to address health care costs, and is expected to focus on quality and "insuring everyone" later this year, according to the Post.

The Post reports that Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber, who helped with the Massachusetts law, has consulted with the three leading Democratic candidates and is "possibly the [Democratic] party's most influential health care expert and voice of realism in its internal debates." Gruber said, "Plans which minimize the disruption to the existing system are more likely to succeed than plans that rip up the existing system and start over." He added, "It doesn't take a genius to see that. That's not to say that plans ripping it up wouldn't be better -- I just think they're political non-starters."

However, Ezekiel Emanuel -- a physician and bioethics expert who has consulted with some candidates and who is Rep. Rahm Emanuel's (D-Ill.) brother -- advocates replacing the current health care system with a plan that would allow people to buy health coverage with vouchers. Emanuel said that the proposals of the leading Democratic candidates are not "bold," adding, "I don't think they solve the problem."

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidates -- including former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who signed the 2006 health reform bill into law -- have depicted the Democratic candidates' proposals as "socialized medicine," the Post reports.

John Sheils, a health care expert at the Lewin Group, said that the Democratic candidates' proposals might not be entirely realistic. "There is an idea you can somehow do all these things controlling costs without anybody doing anything they don't want to do," Sheils said (Bacon, Washington Post, July 10, 2007).

Opinion Piece
"We believe that health insurance providers can promote health, improve quality and reduce costs, thereby creating the means to provide universal access," Aetna Chair and CEO Ronald Williams and Aetna Chief Medical Officer Troyen Brennan write in a Post opinion piece. "We are glad to see presidential candidates support these same goals," they write, concluding, "We hope that politicians and the public recognize that providing access to care that is proven effective and efficient is going to be critical to meaningful reform and that health plans have real expertise to bring to the table" (Williams/Brennan, Washington Post, July 10, 2007)

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Voters Excited Over '08 Campaign; Tired of It, Too

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
New York Times
July 9, 2007

NARBERTH, Pa., July 6 - Kathy Hubbard likes politics, is delighted with the field of Democratic presidential candidates and considers the 2008 presidential race the most exciting - and important - in years.

But she raised an arm in frustration as she cringed at the barrage of images and information that the contest throws at her every day.

"It's too soon," Ms. Hubbard, a creative writing teacher, said as she walked up the street of this trim Philadelphia suburb, her two young daughters and a dog in tow. "I don't ever remember it starting this early. It's bizarre. It's a shame that I have to begin paying attention to the presidential race now."

Ms. Hubbard is hardly alone in her sentiments. In dozens of interviews across the country, voters said the presidential campaign had become much too intense, much too soon.

It is not unusual for Americans to profess irritation at campaigns that they say start too soon. But the sentiment this year appears notably different - and in some ways more complex - than in the past, reflecting the early start to the race, its intensity and, perhaps most of all, a sense in both parties that the country is ready to move beyond the Bush administration.

In interview after interview, voters said they felt overwhelmed by the battle for their attention: the speeches, the attacks, the unceasing news coverage of celebrity candidates, and a fund-raising free-for-all that many described as unseemly.

They worry that the public will lose interest in this contest before a single voter steps into the polls and that the bustle of this supercharged environment is crowding out lesser-known contenders. They are concerned that a race careering along at this pace does not give candidates time to listen and learn from voters, explore new issues and evolve.

But while voters from both parties in many places across the country said they were flinching at the onslaught of this early politicking, they certainly were not disengaged. Many suggested they were eager for the arrival of Election Day and, with it, a change in the White House and in policy at home and abroad.

Colleen Gallagher, a high school teacher in Narberth, said: "People are going to have burnout, they are going to be just sick of hearing about it. It's like, enough already."

Ms. Gallagher then proceeded to slip eagerly into an lively and informed 20-minute conversation about the race.

Those crosscurrents highlight a challenge for the large field of candidates: how to harness the energy coming from an electorate ready for a change without overloading it too soon.

In the Studio City section of Los Angeles, Ed Wood, 34, an independent voter, said that "we're being forced, dragged to pay attention." Mr. Wood added: "It's a really important election. It's going to be a reaction against the current president."

The sense that voters were ready to turn the page on Mr. Bush was reflected even in interviews with some Republicans.

"I did vote for him twice, but I'm very disappointed in him," said Kathy Shaffer, an elementary school teacher from Clear Lake, Iowa. "I have switched completely from pro-Iraq to 'I want them home.' I'm afraid Bush is not going to be able to do anything because of this Iraqi war."

David Labowitz, an insurance salesman here, said he voted for Mr. Bush in 2004 and was eager for the next election to come along so he could rectify what he called his mistake. "I am a registered Republican," Mr. Labowitz said, "but I am so embarrassed to be a registered Republican."

The candidates are drawing full-house crowds, from small Iowa living rooms to rallies in big parks. Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, reported last week that 258,000 people had contributed to his campaign; the leading presidential candidates have raised about $245 million, much of that in small donations.

Almost without exception, in interviews and in public polls, Americans say they consider this race vitally important and are paying attention to what is going on.

"You've got to," Mr. Labowitz said. "American has got some real issues, and we're wasting a lot of time."

Even Ms. Hubbard, as overwhelmed as she said she was by the race, said there might be some benefits. "You do have some time to process information, because there is a lot of information out there," she said, adding, "Maybe I'll be able to make a better and more informed choice."

The responses suggest the challenges candidates face in trying to break from the pack and appeal to voters. In interviews, voters were usually able to volunteer certain candidates' names (think Clinton and Obama), but from there, lapsed into hazy guesses about who the candidates were and what they stood for.

"You just keeping hearing about the big names," Ms. Gallagher said. "When Fred Thompson and those other names come up, I couldn't tell you the first thing about them."

Barri Iskin, a social worker in Philadelphia, said: "It kind of actually sounds all the same after a while. It's hard to really focus on anything specifically."

These sentiments were evident not only in places like Pennsylvania - a vital swing state in the general election, but one that has not yet seen much of the candidates or their commercials - but also in Iowa, where for the last week it was hard to turn a corner, pick up a newspaper or turn on the television without encountering a presidential candidate.

"I'm afraid we are going to get tired of all this hoop-de-la," Ms. Shaffer said as she settled into a lawn chair along the route of an Independence Day Parade in Clear Lake, jostling for ground in a crowd drawn by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (and husband), Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Republican, and other candidates. "It is too much for too long. You get tired of it. You put mute on the commercials. I've heard them already. We're not ready to vote yet."

"And there's so much money involved," she continued.

Bernice Jennings, standing at the edge of a rally for Mr. Obama in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, said, "If I was making the rules, I'd say you've got six months to campaign."

It is a measure of just how overwhelming things are that even in Iowa voters say they are having trouble figuring out, well, who's on first. Iowans could see in person (or on television) Mrs. Clinton; Mr. Obama; Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Delaware Democrat; Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat; Senator Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican; and Mr. Romney.

"They are just jumbled up all over the place," said Terry Lentz, a retired insurance company executive watching the Clear Lake parade. "You can't keep track: whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, you don't know who is on one side or the other. You have Republicans that are sounding like Democrats and Democrats way on the conservative side. I want to wait another six months until this thing is washed out."

Candidates are typically working hard at this point in a presidential campaign cycle. But they are normally flying at a much lower altitude, little noticed outside places like Iowa and New Hampshire. The wide-open field on both sides, the presence of candidates with star power and a nominating calendar with the holding of votes early in the year by a lot more states has accounted for this shift that voters are noting.

And the focus on money has elevated this race even more, even as it adds to the unease among voters. "You hear more about how much they raise each month than you do about their policies," said Drew Johnson, who owns a tavern here in Narberth. "So it's coming down to special-interest money that is supporting these candidates."

In Philadelphia, Donna Braff, 42, who said she was unemployed, said: "When I think about all the millions that are going to be spent - if only we had that kind of money to fix the school system."

Some voters said they would take their time and pay attention when they were ready to pay attention.

"I want to wait until we get closer to the election," said Tekeytha Fulwood, 28, a nurse in Philadelphia. "I want to make sure there is consistency. The main thing I want to do is observe."

Ben Werschkul contributed reporting from Iowa and Pennsylvania, Ana Facio Contreras from California and Lynn Waddell from Florida.

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By ROBIN TONER New York Times July 6, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 5 - There is no better measure of the power of the health care issue than this: Sixteen months before Election Day, presidential candidates in both parties are promising to overhaul the system and cover more -- if not all -- of the 44.8 million people without insurance.

Their approaches are very different, reflecting longstanding divisions between the parties on the role of government versus the private market in addressing the affordability and availability of health insurance. Republicans, by and large, promise to expand coverage by using a variety of tax incentives to empower consumers to buy it themselves, from private insurers. Conservatives warn, repeatedly, of Democrats edging toward the slippery slope of "government-controlled health insurance," as former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York puts it, and promote the innovation and choice offered by private insurers.

The major Democratic candidates propose strengthening the private-employer-based system, through which most working families get their coverage. But many Democrats also see a strong role for government, including, in some plans, new requirements that individuals obtain insurance and that employers provide it, along with substantial new government spending to subsidize coverage for people who cannot afford it.

Still, while they argue over solutions, both parties acknowledge the problems and their political urgency. Republicans, whose primaries usually turn on other issues, often wait until the general election to roll out detailed health plans; this time they are plunging into the debate far earlier. Democrats are competing furiously among themselves over who has the bigger, better plan to control costs and to approach universal coverage, a striking change from the party's wariness on the issue a decade ago after the collapse of the Clintons' health care initiative.

And both parties are closely watching the action in the states as potential blueprints for a centrist compromise, especially in Massachusetts, which just began a major plan intended to require that every individual have insurance.

In short, says Jonathan Gruber, an economist, health expert and Clinton administration veteran, the times are "radically different."

In fact, when Senator Barack Obama of Illinois unveiled a plan intended to cover tens of millions of uninsured Americans, but not requiring coverage for all, some Democrats in rival campaigns argued that he had not gone far enough. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, once vilified as overreaching on health care, is now more often faulted in her party as moving too slowly. Mrs. Clinton's 1994 plan, attacked at the time from the left, right and center, is presented in the new Michael Moore documentary, "Sicko," as a tragic missed opportunity.

This amount of attention, this early, comes in response to the growing anxiety among voters — and much of American business - about the cost of health care. Premiums for family coverage have risen by 87 percent since 2000, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The number of Americans without insurance has grown steadily, to what the Census Bureau estimates as nearly 45 million, from 37 million when the Clintons first confronted the issue.

Businesses say that health costs are a huge liability in their struggles to compete in a global economy, most vividly in the auto industry. And health care is now rated the top domestic issue in some recent polls among Democrats, independents and voters over all. Among Republicans, it was surpassed only by immigration in June, according to the latest Kaiser survey. A Democratic pollster, Geoffrey Garin, says: "There are a bunch of issues that candidates can take a pass on. This is not one of them."

On the Republican side, few candidates have been better prepared to deal with the issue than former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who helped push through that state's health plan with bipartisan support. But Republican primary voters tend to be leery of new government requirements, and, arguably, of Massachusetts as a role model. Mr. Romney, on the campaign trail, talks generally about getting "everybody inside the health care system," through "market reforms" state by state to make private insurance cheaper and more available. But not, he says, "with a government takeover."

Sally Canfield, policy director for the Romney campaign, says that Mr. Romney is proud of his record, but "the Massachusetts plan was crafted for Massachusetts," and that a national plan would be different. For example, aides said he did not support a federal version of the Massachusetts requirement that individuals obtain insurance.

Mr. Romney's rivals are casting themselves as equally committed to improving the health care system, but even more determined to use free-market principles to do so, which they hope will prove them more attuned to the Republican base. Mr. Giuliani plans to produce a major proposal in the next month, aides say, that will elaborate on his commitment to "affordable and portable free-market solutions."

Mr. Giuliani says he wants to give individuals more control over, and responsibility for, health insurance, encouraging them to buy their own coverage on the private market and giving them "a very big tax deduction" to do it. Right now, most Americans under 65 get their coverage through their employers, who have the benefit of significant tax advantages, pooled risk and group rates.

Mr. Giuliani's approach echoes President Bush's call for an "ownership society," which was popular with economic conservatives but widely criticized as putting too much risk on individuals. "Every one of the Democrats wants government-mandated health insurance," Mr. Giuliani said recently. "We have to go in exactly the opposite direction."

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, will also outline a health care plan this summer, aides said. They said it would be intended to make coverage "affordable and available," using tax credits and the expansion of programs like the State Children's Health Insurance Program, but would include no new mandates on individuals.

Analysts say the Democrats are clearly drawing lessons from the health care battles of 1993-4, when a similar public groundswell for change collapsed in a matter of months. The 1,342-page Clinton plan at that time was bewilderingly bureaucratic and easy for opponents to characterize as something that would actually worsen the status quo for many insured Americans.

This year, the major Democratic proposals - including Mr. Obama's, one from former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina and a plan expected from Mrs. Clinton - are arguably ambitious and costly, but do not try the wholesale reinvention of the system, or move explicitly toward the government takeover Republicans so often predict.

"There's not a lot of untested political ideas out there," said Robert Blendon, a professor in health policy at Harvard.

The major Democratic plans announced so far try to cover nearly everyone by shoring up the employer-based system, creating new public insurance options and establishing new health insurance purchasing pools that offer a variety of private and public plans to people who cannot get coverage through work. People who could not afford coverage would get subsidies. Given those supports, some Democrats (including Mr. Edwards and -- it is widely expected but not yet announced -- Mrs. Clinton) back the idea of requiring every individual to obtain insurance.

Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama call for financing their plans with revenue from ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; those cuts are set to expire in 2010.

Diane Rowland, executive vice president of Kaiser, said candidates were responding not only to recent failures, but also to recent successes, notably in Massachusetts and potentially California.

"To get something enacted, you need a lot of people who think they will gain from it," Ms. Rowland said. "It's a new way of talking about health reform, because it shows people with health insurance what they could gain. These proposals are not just about the haves versus the have-nots."

Few have taken that advice more to heart than Mrs. Clinton, who is rolling out her proposals to control costs and improve quality before her ideas for covering the uninsured, which are expected in the next few months. She recently, for example, proposed a "Best Practices Institute" to assess the most effective treatments and procedures.

Another hallmark of this year's plans, in both parties, is a reliance on better health information technology and disease management to hold down costs -- not the more rigorous regulatory structures proposed in 1994, which critics asserted would soon lead to rationing.

By the time Election Day rolls around, polls indicate that the issue will be front and center, setting the stage for another great battle to overhaul the system under the next president. Veterans of the Clinton administration say it all feels familiar.

"If the Democrats win, it will be very hard not to take this issue on," said Mr. Gruber, who is helping to carry out the Massachusetts plan. "It will be as promising as it was in the early 1990s."

Edith. M. Prentiss

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Republicans Trail Democrats in Fund-Raising
By ADAM NAGOURNEY, New York Times
July 4, 2007

DES MOINES, July 3 - Two more Republican presidential candidates disclosed new fund-raising totals on Tuesday that underscored the tough political environment for their party and the big money advantage that the Democrats have built.

Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, who led the Republican field in money raised in the first three months of the year, said donations to his primary campaign had dropped by a third in the second quarter, to $14 million from $20.5 million. Mr. Romney lent his campaign another $6.5 million out of his personal fortune to soften the impact of the decline in donations.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, raised more in the second quarter than he did in the first: $17 million including $2 million that he can use only if he wins the Republican nomination, versus about $15 million. But unlike the first quarter, when his fund-raising operation was just getting up and running, his campaign was fully operational in the second quarter.

And while his performance from April through June put him in first place among Republicans, Mr. Giuliani trailed substantially behind the record sums raised by two Democrats, Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. Mr. Obama raised a total of $32.5 million in the second quarter, and Mrs. Clinton about $27 million.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani released the figures a day after Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, reported that he raised less money in the second quarter than in the first, and said he would slash the size of his staff and focus his campaign on a few early voting states.

Put together, the results for the three leading Republicans amounted to a stark indication of a gap in enthusiasm and confidence between the two parties, driven in part by President Bush's low approval ratings, the war in Iraq and the failure of any of the Republican candidates to emerge as a clear front-runner, strategists in both parties said.

The top three Democrats, including former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, raised $68.5 million over the past three months, compared with $48.7 million for the top three Republicans, according to the reports. Since the start of the year, the Democrats raised nearly 50 percent more than the Republicans, $144.3 million compared with $101.7 million. That includes money that the candidates can use in the primary and in the general election.

Historically, the second-quarter receipts tend to grow for presidential candidates as donors get more involved and take sides in the race. Aides to the Republican candidates -- as well as Republicans not involved in the race -- said that this year might be an anomaly because the campaign had gotten so intense so early, but they nonetheless expressed deep concern at the reports and what it said about the health of their party.

"It's a combination of the president's historically low approval rating and the overall state of affairs in Washington that is demoralizing Republicans and energizing Democrats," said Scott Reed, who managed the 1996 Republican presidential campaign of Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. "It doesn't mean it'll make it all the way to 2008 Election Day, but that sure is the climate we are in now."

Charles Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain, suggested that part of what was happening was that some donors were holding back to see if another Republican -- in particular, former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee -- would enter the race, as Mr. Thompson is expected to do formally in the next few weeks.

"The general mood is bad throughout the party," Mr. Black said. "There are some donors that are used to giving money all the time, and there are a whole bunch of people who are more casual donors who need to be fired up. The Democrats on the other hand are totally fired up, intensely fired up against the president."

Beyond the symbolism, the divergence in the fund-raising performance of the two parties -- which also extends to the Congressional campaigns, where Democrats have also built a big cash advantage -- is likely to influence basic strategic decisions by Republicans on matters like when to begin television advertising and where to compete.

In an early example of this, several Republicans said it was now clear that Mr. Giuliani and Mr. McCain chose to skip the straw poll in Iowa -- a high-profile nonbinding vote by party activists in which Mr. Romney is investing heavily -- because it could easily cost each campaign $3 million to compete.

Aides to Mr. McCain, offering new details of his campaign's financial woes on Tuesday, said that the shortfall had forced them to dismiss 80 members of a staff of 120, putting him at a marked disadvantage in states like Iowa, where he had hoped for an early victory in the caucuses to propel him to the nomination.

Mr. McCain's staff in Iowa has been cut in half to eight, compared with a staff of 16 in the state for Mr. Romney. Mr. McCain's situation here has been aggravated by what his associates described as a clash between Mr. McCain's national and Iowa headquarters that resulted in his state director, Matt Strawn, leaving the campaign.

One McCain aide, requesting anonymity in exchange for discussing the dispute, said that some of the people who had left the Iowa headquarters had done so in support of Mr. Strawn, and that the campaign was hoping to expand the staff here should money start coming in. Mr. Strawn declined to comment.

Mr. McCain's aides said Tuesday that the senator was shutting down his Michigan state office. Given his financial difficulties, the aides said that Mr. McCain was almost certain to accept public money for his campaign, despite the sharp restrictions it would place on his spending in the primary and in the months leading up to the general election, as a way to be able to afford television advertising early this year. They said that would guarantee an infusion of about $6 million, based on what he has raised so far, and perhaps a total of $15 million by the time the caucuses start here in January.

Mr. McCain's advisers said they were hoping he would, over the next six months, be able to raise $25 million, matching what he raised in the first half of the year. They acknowledged, though, that that would be difficult because donors would be reluctant to write checks to a campaign that appears to be in crisis.

"I wouldn't be straight with you if I didn't say there would be a significant initial drop-off from this," said John Weaver, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain. "But our finance people are confident that if we show the kind of movement that we think we can, that we'll get back on track."

Some of the Democratic advantage appears to stem from the success the party's candidates have had in tapping into grass-roots enthusiasm for dislodging the Republicans from the White House. Mr. Obama's campaign has reported receiving donations from more than 258,000 contributors this year and raising $10 million online in the second quarter. More than 80,000 donors contributed to the Romney campaign in the second quarter, 50,000 of them for the first time; in the first quarter, 32,000 people contributed to his campaign.

For years, Republicans prided themselves on having a large base of individual donors while Democrats relied to a large degree on unregulated soft money donations that have now been banned. So far in this cycle, Democrats appear to be building vast databases of new individual donors who could be called on by the party for years to come.

Mr. McCain reported Tuesday that he had just $2 million in the bank to cover the operations of his campaign; Mr. Giuliani's campaign said he had nine times as much, or $18 million, and no debt. Mr. Romney has about $12 million in cash on hand for use in the primary.

Mr. McCain's aides declined to say what outstanding debt he would report. Mr. Romney's decision to again invest his own money into the campaign -- he lent it $2.35 million in the first quarter -- was clearly intended to signal he was prepared to use his wealth to offset the bad fund-raising environment his party finds itself in. Mr. Romney has been plowing through his money rapidly, pouring much of it into an expensive early advertising campaign focused on Iowa and New Hampshire that has helped him to leads in recent polls there.

David D. Kirkpatrick, Michael Luo and Marc Santora contributed reporting.

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