Is Hillary showing too much edge?
BY GLENN THRUSH
July 28, 2007, 9:51 PM EDT
WASHINGTON -- For seven years Hillary Rodham Clinton has played against type, courting skeptics and sandpapering away her sharpest edges to counter perceptions that she was caustic, short-tempered and politically ruthless.
That charm offensive came to a screeching halt after last Monday's YouTube/CNN debate when she ridiculed Barack Obama's promise to meet with hostile foreign leaders unconditionally during his first year in office.
Her aides were declaring victory in last week's fight, but Clinton's attacks on the Illinois senator have some wondering if she's sacrificing long-term image-building for a few whacks at an opponent who's been getting under her skin.
"She threw some of that goodwill out the window by attacking Obama," said Andrew Polsky, a Hunter College political science professor.
"She has a very difficult road ahead of her," he added. "Her negatives are so high, 40 to 45 percent of the American people won't vote for her under any circumstance. Can she really afford to alienate anybody else? That's the real risk they are taking when she goes into attack mode."
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Mark Penn, Clinton's pollster and a top political adviser, said Clinton isn't attacking so much as mounting a very, very vigorous defense against Obama's criticism of her war record.
"He always intended to use the debate to open a much wider range of attacks against her," Penn said. "So we had to come back at him ... I think people see him as much more the aggressor."
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