MANCHESTER, N.H. — With the Democratic presidential race turned upside down, a newly assertive Hillary Rodham Clinton used a Saturday-night debate to portray Barack Obama as a flip-flopper who cannot be trusted to deliver the change he promises.
Staggered by her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, the New York senator was the aggressor throughout a 90-minute session that showed the reconstituted candidate lineup in stark relief.
"Words are not action," Clinton said, taking aim at the eloquence of Obama, who handily beat her in Iowa. "As beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, they are not action. What we've got to do is translate talk into action and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that."
The Illinois senator, who spent most of the debate in the position Clinton once occupied -- coolly above the fray -- responded evenly. Words, he said, can bring about change, the mantra of the Democratic race and a word uttered 62 times throughout the night.
"Don't discount that power," Obama said, "because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers."
Obama received an unexpected defense from former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, Iowa's second-place finisher, who had been the most pugnacious candidate in the field; lately many of his shots had been aimed at Obama.
"He believes deeply in change and I believe deeply in change. . . . I didn't hear these kinds of attacks from Sen. Clinton when she was ahead," Edwards said Saturday night, as she looked at him stone-faced. "Now that she's not, we hear them. And any time you speak out, any time you speak out for change, this is what happens."
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson broke the tension with a joke. "I've been in hostage negotiations that have been more civil than this," he said, drawing a big laugh from the audience at St. Anselm College. He urged the candidates to stay positive and reserve their fire for the GOP candidates.
In one of the more striking tableaux of the political season, the four Democrats shook hands with the six Republicans who remained onstage after their preceding debate at the urging of the moderator for both debates, ABC's Charles Gibson.
