Democratic Advisors Debate at the IOP

Top campaign advisers to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama engaged in verbal combat at the Institute of Politics last night, sparring over the Illinois senator’s stated views on the war in Iraq.

Mark J. Penn ’76, Clinton’s senior strategist, set off a debate when he pointed to a 2004 quote by Obama in which the then-state senator claimed he did not know how he would have voted on the war if he were in the U.S. Senate. Penn said the quote ran counter to Obama’s stated longtime opposition to the war.

“Are we going to tell people the truth about what the candidates have voted for, what they have said, or are we going to do it selectively?” Penn, a former Crimson editor, said.

In response, Obama’s senior strategist, David Axelrod, said the quote was taken out of context, and that Obama had consistently opposed the war.

Axelrod concluded by asking “are we going to spend 10 months attacking each other or are we going to try to lift the people up?”

Penn and Axelrod, along with John Edwards’ senior campaign adviser, Jonathan Prince, discussed topics ranging from global health care to strategies to engage the youth vote in front of a packed house at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

Penn noted that it was crucial in the 2008 election to get “the young people involved and not feeling that everything is predetermined” in American politics.

Axelrod highlighted the importance of the war in Iraq to today’s youth, saying the “people who have borne the greatest burden of this war are the young people.”

The three also noted the heightened concern surrounding energy dependence and global warming among today’s young people as well as the increased use of media outlets such as Facebook as a method of campaigning.

Moderators Mark E. Halperin ‘87, political director of ABC News, and Mark McKinnon, a lecturer at the Kennedy School, began the discussion with a conversation on the unprecedented pace of the 2008 campaign, with Prince claiming that the speed is “a testament to how much people are ready for a change in direction.”

President of the Harvard College Democrats Brigit M. Helgen ’08 said that she thought “the forum went very well” and that the exchange between Axelrod and Penn “was a healthy discussion and it addressed the fundamental differences between the two campaigns.”