‘Clinical Clinton’ reinforced as aide plants audience query

So it went. “I find as I travel around Iowa that it’s usually young people that ask me about global warming,” Clinton said. No presidential campaign likes surprises, but Clinton’s operation might be unmatched in its discipline. By planting questions at what are supposed to be unscripted question-and-answer sessions with Iowa voters, Clinton might have fed perceptions that her campaign is too programmed for its own good, Democratic strategists said.

The episode followed a Democratic debate in Philadelphia where Clinton was widely faulted for offering ambiguous and perhaps overly calculated answers on Iraq, immigration and Social Security.

Clinton campaign spokesmen said the episode was an isolated one. An unnamed aide wanted Clinton to succeed and — without the candidate’s knowledge — veered from the campaign’s routine practice, they said. “To my knowledge, this was something that just happened on this one occasion and is not something that will happen again,” said Mo Elleithee, senior spokesman for the campaign.

One other man describes a similar incident. Geoffrey Mitchell, a minister, said that at a Clinton appearance in Iowa in April a campaign aide suggested in the course of a conversation that he ask the candidate how she was “confronting” President Bush on Iraq. “There was no doubt in my mind that they were attempting to get me to ask a specific question that they wanted to talk about,” Mitchell said in an interview.

Spontaneous exchanges with voters are a ritual in Iowa and New Hampshire. “This is all multiplied dramatically by the fact that Iowa and New Hampshire have this tradition of grass-roots politics, town hall meetings and house parties where everybody can have at it,” said Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic consultant.