Hillary and Obama's Campaign Advisors Spar Over Iraq

Clinton, Obama Camps Spar on War

By Dan Balz

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, March 20, 2007; Page A06

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 19 -- A brewing argument over Iraq between the presidential campaigns of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama broke into public view here Monday night when Clinton's chief strategist challenged Obama's credentials as a consistent opponent of the war.

Mark Penn and Obama strategist David Axelrod engaged in a pointed and occasionally heated exchange during a public forum at Harvard University over the issue that has become the central point of dispute between the two leading candidates for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

"Do you think Hillary Clinton is the kind of person who if she were president would have started the Iraq war?" Penn asked. "No." As his exchange with Axelrod continued, he raised the question that many Clinton advisers see as critical: "Is this election going to turn about what happened in 2002 or what's going to happen in the future?"

Hillary Clinton Hires Bob Nash as Deputy Campaign Manager

March 19, 2007

Clinton Hires Deputy Campaign Manager

Sen. Hillary Clinton has tapped Bob Nash, a former Clinton administration official and currently the president of a pioneering community development bank, to be one of several deputy campaign managers.

It's unclear what Nash's portfolio will be. He's been informally helping the campaign contact and massage the egos of prominent African American political leaders, so he might manage the campaign's outreach to allies or perhaps its political operation.

Nash is the vice chair of ShoreBank Corp, which bills itself as the "country's first and largest community development bank." In the Clinton administration, he served as director for presidential personnel and prior to that, undersecretary of Agriculture. An Arkansan, Nash was a top aide to Gov. Bill Clinton in the 1980s.

Nash will report to manager Patti Solis Doyle.