News analysis | Obama under the klieg lights now

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Democrats who spent a year playing "Iowa Nice" might be taking a turn into New Hampshire nasty.

Sen. Barack Obama's message of hope and unity was a fine fit for Iowa, a state where voters are notoriously resistant to negative campaigning, and the Democratic contest he won there was a relatively civil affair. Not a single televised attack ad was shown and the contenders exchanged only mild jabs.

Such pleasantries will surely be jettisoned in New Hampshire by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who only has five days to rebound from a crippling loss in Iowa in order to prevent her candidacy from imploding; and by John Edwards, who placed slightly ahead of Clinton in Iowa and has shown his willingness to take a scalpel to his opponents when necessary.

Obama has gone into this state's compressed contest with a target on his back — a situation he has managed to avoid throughout his career in politics.

"We don't need more heat — we need more light," he said Friday, as if anticipating the sharper tone to come.

But he's under the klieg lights now.

"Obama, through an unprecedented convergence of luck and skill, has never before faced serious attack delivered by a competent opponent," Democratic strategist Dan Newman said. "He's now earned the right to be mercilessly scrubbed and scrutinized. No one knows how he'll respond to the challenge, and how voters will evaluate the criticism."

Clinton said Friday that voters deserve a close examination of Obama's positions and the contrasts among candidates.

"I think everybody is supposed to be vetted and tested," she said. "The last thing Democrats need is to move quickly through this process, so telescoped, without taking a hard look at all of this. ... It's hard to know exactly where he stands and people need to ask that."

She added: "I think there's a lot to talk about, comparing and contrasting."

Clinton, whose once sturdy lead in New Hampshire had already begun to shrink in the days before Iowa's caucuses, is relying on the state as her husband did in 1992 to make her the "comeback kid." The former president is still widely popular here and will campaign for his wife until the primary on Tuesday.

"New Hampshire is the last chance for someone who loses Iowa," said Andrew Smith, polling director for the University of New Hampshire. "You lose in Iowa and you lose New Hampshire, it's done. You go home."

Clinton's aides say her campaign will renew its scrutiny of Obama's comparatively thin record and lack of foreign policy experience, questioning whether he is ready to lead in a dangerous world.

They will also try to paint him as something of a phony — someone whose lofty rhetoric isn't born out in his own public record. They point to his votes in the Senate to fund the Iraq war even as he tried to position himself as the strongest anti-war candidate in the field.

"He talks about change but has no real record of making change," said Mark Penn, the Clinton campaign's pollster and senior strategist.

The Clinton campaign is also likely to begin showing commercials attacking Obama's health care plan, which they say would leave 15 million people uninsured.

Edwards, meanwhile, can be expected to renew questions about whether Obama's brand of unity politics is too naive for the dog-eat-dog world of partisan Washington.

Much will also be riding on a nationally televised debate among the Democratic contenders Saturday. Both Clinton and Edwards have typically excelled in such forums, while Obama's performances have been inconsistent.

"The debate will loom large," said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire. "It's a chance for Clinton to score some needed points, so she will probably try to make Obama look bad and capitalize on something with regard to his lack of experience."

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Editor's Note: Beth Fouhy covers politics for The Associated Press.