WASHINGTON — A Hollywood mogul’s sharp attack on Senator Clinton is triggering the first exchange of serious political punches between Mrs. Clinton and her leading rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Obama of Illinois.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has demanded that Mr. Obama disavow the harsh criticism leveled at her and President Clinton by a principal at DreamWorks SKG, David Geffen. Mr. Geffen and his business partners, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, hosted a $1.3 million fund-raiser for Mr. Obama on Tuesday night in Beverly Hills, Calif.

A column in yesterday’s New York Times quoted Mr. Geffen as saying both Clintons are liars and predicting that Mr. Clinton’s personal behavior will doom Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid.

Mrs. Clinton’s communications director, Howard Wolfson, hit back quickly yesterday against what he termed “vicious attacks” on the Clintons.

“If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign, and return his money,” Mr. Wolfson said.

Mr. Obama’s camp responded not with an apology or a disavowal, but with another strike on the Clintons.

“We aren’t going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters,” Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said. “It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when [he] was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

The Clinton camp’s salvo at Mr. Obama seemed intended to pull him into the rough and tumble of the campaign despite his intention to remain above the fray, at least for now.

At a union-sponsored health care forum in Nevada yesterday, Mrs. Clinton declined to endorse her own campaign’s calls for Mr. Obama to disavow Mr. Geffen’s words and his money, but she made clear she deplored the attack. “I sure don’t want Democrats or the supporters of Democrats engaging in the politics of personal destruction,” she said. “I believe Bill Clinton was a good president and I’m very proud of the record of his two terms.”

Mrs. Clinton did take a dig at Mr. Obama by saying she was pleased to be “with the other candidates who came to talk to the people here.” Mr. Obama was the only major candidate to skip the event. He chose to campaign in Iowa instead.

A Democratic political adviser, Christopher Lehane, said Mr. Geffen’s comments pointed up the difficulty Mr. Obama may face as the reality of a hard-knuckle campaign collides with his promise to pursue a new kind of politics. “If you’re going to run as a philosopher-king, you’re setting a very high standard,” Mr. Lehane said. “If Obama won’t denounce these things, it begins to destroy what makes him interesting to folks.”

While the Clinton camp may have been taken aback by Mr. Geffen’s words, it cannot have been surprised by the general thrust of his critique. At an event at the 92nd Street Y in 2005, the music industry impresario bluntly dismissed Mrs. Clinton as a presidential candidate. “She can’t win, and she’s an incredibly polarizing figure,” he said, according to the New York Daily News. “And ambition is just not a good enough reason.”

And in an interview with Time magazine in 2001, Mr. Clinton said Mr. Geffen no longer speaks to him.

The bad blood between Mr. Geffen and the Clintons seems to have arisen from Mr. Clinton’s refusal to pardon an American Indian activist, Leonard Peltier, who has become a cause célèbre on the left. Mr. Geffen and other Hollywood figures lobbied Mr. Clinton to release Peltier, who is serving two life terms for murdering two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout.

Mr. Geffen complained to the Times that Mr. Clinton denied clemency to Peltier while pardoning a billionaire businessman, Marc Rich.
“Marc Rich getting pardoned? An oil profiteer expatriate who left the country rather than pay taxes or face justice?” the music mogul said. “Yet another time when the Clintons were unwilling to stand for the things they genuinely believe in. Everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.”

In a statement sent by e-mail, Mr. Geffen put some distance between himself and the Obama campaign, rejecting the Clinton’s camp description of him as a finance chairman for Mr. Obama. However, the studio chief stood by his remarks. “My comments, which were quoted accurately by Maureen Dowd, reflect solely my personal beliefs regarding the Clintons. Thank you,” Mr. Geffen wrote.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign also signaled a strategy that will treat as beyond the pale any reference to the Clintons’ character or their personal conduct.

“If you’re going to get into people’s personal behavior, I think that’s under the belt. Yes, I do,” Mr. Wolfson told MSNBC yesterday.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama has put off another potential policy speech. The Illinois senator was considering delivering a talk on Middle East issues Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, but organizers said Mr. Obama’s staff indicated yesterday that he would not be able to attend.

Separately, a former Senate majority leader, Thomas Daschle, snubbed Mrs. Clinton yesterday by announcing that he is endorsing Mr. Obama. According to the Associated Press, Mr. Daschle said the Illinois senator has “a great capacity to unify our country and inspire a new generation of young Americans, just as I was inspired by the Kennedys and Martin Luther King when I was young.”