Obama camp: Hillary's pillories won't fly in Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa -- The criticisms by presidential wannabe Hillary Clinton of her main rival Barack Obama -- including suggestions he has been disingenuous about his White House ambitions -- won't sit well with Iowans who temperamentally don't like "negative or gratuitous attacks," says Obama's media strategist, David Axelrod.

Clinton's e-mails say the presidency was a long-term ambition of Obama's, right from kindergarten, not something he just recently considered.

The Clinton campaign culled an AP story revealing that in kindergarten, Obama wrote an essay titled "I Want to Become President." It also quoted his third-grade teacher and his law school colleagues saying the same thing.

Axelrod shrugged it off as silliness. "We have a lot of faith in the common sense of Iowa voters," he said Tuesday. He jokingly wondered why the Clinton camp didn't slam Obama's third-grade penmanship.

Clinton has also suggested Obama waffles on his pro-choice stance -- based on his record in the Illinois Senate -- and her aides held a press conference with Ellen Malcolm, president of EMILY's List, who championed Clinton as a "real leader on protecting reproductive rights."

Obama's aides countered this by handing out a letter dated May 18, 2006, in which Malcolm commends Obama on a speech he gave to an EMILY's List conference. She scrawled: "You were terrific and really lit a fire with our members."