MANCHESTER, N.H. — After a difficult week in which Hillary Rodham Clinton weathered the embarrassing resignation of a top state campaign official and faced new polls showing Barack Obama pulling even with her in New Hampshire, the senator from New York went door to door telegraphing the message that she wasn't taking a single voter for granted.
The stakes for her campaign were highlighted by her husband, former President Clinton, who suggested in an interview with PBS's Charlie Rose that the senator from Illinois was a symbol of change rather than "a change agent," and said voters who chose Obama's freshness over Clinton's experience could be taking a risk with the country's future.
In Manchester, more than 30 members of the media stumbled through the snowbanks beside Clinton as she walked the icy sidewalk of Montgomery Street with supporter Lou D'Allesandro, a state senator, clutching her elbow to make sure she didn't slip in her boots.
Obama campaign: An article in Section A on Sunday about Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign in Iowa referred to John F. Kerry as a former senator. Kerry is still a senator.
Later, in town halls in Plaistow and Nashua, Clinton promised "a new beginning in America" and expanded her argument that she could be a "change- maker" based on her more than three decades of experience working for children's rights, for women's rights and for the middle class.
Unlike her husband, Clinton did not criticize her chief rivals, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Obama by name -- but she expanded on a dig she made earlier on their respective messages.
It isn't enough to demand change or hope for change, she said, and added: "If you are too unyielding then you are likely to end up with nothing to show for it. If you are too compromising, you may very well give up your principles. . . . We need a president more than ever with a lifetime of experience making positive change for people."
Her husband took a more direct tack in the Rose interview aired Friday night when he praised Obama's "staggering political skills," but continued: "If you listen to the people who are most strongly for him, they say basically we have to throw away all these experienced people because they've been through the wars of the '90s and, you know, they've made enough decisions and enough calls that they've made a few mistakes; and what we want is somebody who started running for president a year after he became a senator because he's fresh, he's new, he's never made a mistake and he has massive political skills and we're willing to risk it."
