PRESIDENT CLINTON SEES POST-IOWA ‘TIDAL WAVE’

On a day when his wife got choked up on the campaign trail, President Clinton showed anger and frustration as he complained that the press has given a free ride to the nascent front-runner in the Democratic presidential contest, Senator Obama of Illinois.

“It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, enumerating the years, and never got asked one time–not once, ‘Well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn’t know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war,” Mr. Clinton said at a town-hall style meeting at Dartmouth College . “Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairytale I’ve ever seen.”

Mr. Clinton’s answer came in response to a questioner who challenged the judgment of Senator Clinton’s pollster and chief strategist, Mark Penn, for being negative in a memo he sent out Saturday claiming Mr. Obama got no bounce out of Iowa.

“The bounce always occurs on the second day not the first day,” Mr. Clinton said, conceding the mistake before turning the table on the questioner and the Obama camp. “What did you think about the Obama thing calling Hillary the senator from Punjab? Did you like that? Or what about the Obama handout that was covered up, the press never reported on, implying that I was a crook. Scouring me—scathing criticism over my financial reports. Ken Starr spent $70 million to find out that I wouldn’t take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon.”

“So you can take a shot at Mark Penn if you want. It wasn’t his best day. He was hurt. He felt badly we didn’t do better in Iowa,” Mr. Clinton explained during the forum, viewed via CNN’s Web site. “But the idea that one of these campaigns is positive and the other is negative when I know the reverse is true and I have seen it and I have been blistered by it for months is a little tough to take just because of the sanitizing coverage that’s in the media doesn’t mean the facts aren’t out there.”

The former president sounded resigned and glum about Mrs. Clinton’s chances in New Hampshire, saying the decision to hold the primary five days after Iowa left little room for her to recover. “There’s just only so much you can do against a tidal wave,” he said.

CHELSEA CLINTON STUMPS FOR MOTHER

The new accessibility of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign in the wake of her loss in Iowa is extending even to her daughter, Chelsea, who was previously kept at more of a distance from reporters. Journalists and camera crews were invited to tag along yesterday as she made phone calls to New Hampshire voters on her mother’s behalf and visited coffee shops in a last-ditch effort to sway some minds.

Most of the voters Chelsea called weren’t home, but she did reach one woman who fond of Rep. Dennis Kucinich but willing to consider Mrs. Clinton as a more viable candidate.

At one coffee shop, Chelsea found a prospect behind the counter. “I might vote for your mom,” the woman said, adding, “I’m leaning towards Obama for a couple of reasons.” When the woman hesitated, Chelsea shooed the TV camera away and made her pitch.

Another New Hampshire resident was seen in TV footage asking Chelsea about “the fact that we don’t let Al Jazeera in English to broadcast here over the regular cable channels. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Chelsea said her mother was sympathetic. “She would like to build on the work my father did when he was in office of trying to broker a peace. But also to have a more open, two-way dialogue with the world and to get back in the business of listening to the world,” the Clinton daughter said.