WASHINGTON — Before the Iowa caucuses, senior aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton fell into a heated argument during a 7:30 a.m. conference call about the basic message their candidate was delivering to voters.
Mark Penn, chief strategist and pollster, liked Clinton's emphasis on her "strength and experience," and he defended the idea of her running as a quasi-incumbent best suited for the presidency. Harold Ickes and other advisors said that message was not working. A more promising strategy, they argued, would be to focus on the historic prospect of electing the first woman president.
Today, as Clinton tries to revive her campaign after losing 10 straight primary contests to Sen. Barack Obama, some insiders look back and wish that argument had produced a different outcome. Penn won the debate, say two people aware of the conversation, and Clinton went on to present herself to voters as a steely figure so familiar with the workings of government that she could lead from Day One.
The Clinton campaign now seems in peril, its precarious situation acknowledged on Wednesday even by former President Bill Clinton, who suggested that his wife could not survive a loss in either of the next two major contests, in Texas and Ohio on March 4.
"If she wins Texas and Ohio, I think she will be the nominee," the former president told an audience in Beaumont, Texas. "If you don't deliver for her, I don't think she can be."
Still, the campaign seems to be doubling its bet on the message that caused so much division among top aides before the first caucuses in Iowa.
Even as results rolled in from Wisconsin on Tuesday night, eventually yielding a 17-point loss, Clinton said she alone was best prepared to be commander in chief.
And at an evening rally in Brownsville, Texas, on Wednesday, she continued: "When you begin to talk to your friends, ask them: Who do they want to be in the White House when the phone rings at 3 in the morning with some problem or some crisis? We need a commander in chief who's ready from Day One to be in charge of our country."
The internal friction over Clinton's message was never fully resolved. A schism persists to this day. Some people close to the campaign's inner circle believe Clinton should make more of an effort to show a warmer, softer side before the March 4 primaries. Her next opportunity to present herself to a national audience comes today with a debate against Obama in Austin, to be carried by CNN and Univision.
