Obama's Finally Campaigning

Originally Posted by Adam Nagourney

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 27 — Senator Barack Obama said he would start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, declaring Friday that she had not been candid in describing her views on critical issues, as he tries to address mounting alarm among supporters that his lack of assertiveness has allowed her to dominate the presidential race.

Mr. Obama’s vow to go on the offensive comes just over two months before the first votes are cast for the Democratic nomination, and after a long period in which his aides, donors and other supporters have battled — and in some cases shared — the perception that he has not exhibited the aggressiveness demanded by presidential politics.

In an interview that appeared timed by his campaign to signal the change of course, Mr. Obama said “now is the time” for him to distinguish himself from Mrs. Clinton. While he said that he was not out to “kneecap the front-runner, because I don’t think that’s what the country is looking for,” he said she was deliberately obscuring her positions for political gain and was less likely than he was to win back the White House for Democrats.

Asked if Mrs. Clinton had been fully truthful with voters about what she would do as president, Mr. Obama replied, “No.”

“I don’t think people know what her agenda exactly is,” Mr. Obama added, citing Social Security, Iraq and Iran as issues on which she had not been entirely forthcoming.

“Now it’s been very deft politically,” he said. “But one of the things that I firmly believe is that we’ve got to be clear with the American people right now about the important choices that we’re going to need to make in order to get a mandate for change, not to try to obfuscate and avoid being a target in the general election.”

For months, Democrats, including some within Mr. Obama’s campaign, have questioned whether his promise to pursue a brand of politics that transcended partisanship had so handcuffed him that he could not compete in the most partisan of arenas.

Alan D. Solomont, a former contributor to both Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton who is now raising money for Mr. Obama in Boston, said there was a growing consensus that Mr. Obama had to ratchet up his intensity and draw sharper distinctions with Mrs. Clinton, of New York, and other rivals.

“The only way that he’s going to be able to be clear with the American people,” Mr. Solomont said in an interview, “is to draw a distinction between his candidacy and his ideas about change and those of other candidates. It’s fair to say that he is beginning to do that, but he hasn’t done enough yet.”

In the interview, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, acknowledged that he had held back until now, though he asserted it was a calculated decision to introduce himself in early voting states before engaging opponents. At times, he said, he has taken lines out of speeches prepared by his campaign that he felt were “stretching the truth.”

But Mr. Obama said the plan had always been for him to begin taking on Mrs. Clinton more directly in the fall. And he glared and said no when asked if he lacked the stomach for confrontational politics. “It is absolutely true that we have to make these distinctions clearer,” he said. “And I will not shy away from doing that.”

A test of just how far Mr. Obama is willing to go should come Tuesday night, when Democrats meet for a nationally televised debate in Philadelphia. [In a campaign statement issued Saturday in Iowa, Mr. Obama asserted that Mrs. Clinton had “repeatedly dodged opportunities to reveal her thinking about the best way to strengthen Social Security.”]

The interview came amid growing signs that Mr. Obama was looking for a fresh start for his campaign after nine months in which his aides said they were startled by the effectiveness of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and worried that her support was not as brittle as they had once believed.