Sen. Barack Obama kicked off the countdown to the Iowa caucuses yesterday with a sharp attack on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton - raising the specter of a "secretive" history and problems in her husband's administration. "You have to ask yourself, who's talked the talk, because that will be the measure of how seriously they take this stuff," Obama said. "If they've been secretive in the past, they'll be secretive as president," he said at an Iowa rally. "If they haven't been all that strong on lobbyists in the past, doesn't matter what they say in the campaign - they won't be that strong about it when they are president."
The "secretive" charge has been lodged by Clinton critics who question why thousands of pages of material from Hillary's days as first lady haven't been released.
Clinton, campaigning with her husband, took a veiled jab at Obama. "Some believe you can get change by demanding it, and some believe you can get change by hoping for it," she said. "I believe you can get change by working really, really hard for it. And I think it takes strength and experience to be able to make change in our political system," she went on. "We don't have any time to waste."
Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Rudy Giuliani began a three-day tour of Florida. His personal doctor yesterday gave him a clean bill of health, a week after the former New York mayor was hospitalized when he suffered a "significant headache."