The Clinton campaign isn't saying anything on the record about the five-point counterterrorism plan Barack Obama outlined Wednesday, but Team Hillary won't exactly be unhappy if reporters writing about the speech frame it this way:
Obama's needs: Obama has no choice but to come out with tough talk about terrorism because voters don't yet trust him on "commander in chief" issues. That characterization gets some support from a Rasmussen poll released last week in which 28 percent of the respondents said they trusted Sen. Clinton the most on national security issues, compared with just 13 percent who said they trusted Sen. Obama the most. The counterevidence: A new Gallup poll shows statistically insignificant differences when it comes to whether voters trust Clinton or Obama more on Iraq or terrorism.
Obama's past: While Obama spoke out against the war in Iraq before it started and on Wednesday knocked Congress -- and, without naming names, Clinton -- for "rubber-stamping" the 2002 use of force resolution for Iraq, he told the New York Times back in 2004 that he didn't know how he would have voted on the resolution if he'd been in the Senate at the time because he wasn't "privy" to the intelligence reports Congress received.
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