Sen. Barack Obama has said on the campaign trail that he has not been planning to run for President for decades, an indirect jab at Sen. Hillary Clinton, who by some accounts has been planning it. Here’s part of the Clinton campaign’s press release responding to Obama’s claim:

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want To Be a President.’ His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga “asked her class to write an essay titled ‘My dream: What I want to be in the future.’ Senator Obama wrote ‘I want to be a President,’ she said.” [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’ “Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama’s kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, ‘I Want To Become President,’ the teacher said.” [AP, 1/25/07 ]

Never mind the fact that in elementary school, almost every student across the country probably writes something about what they would like to be when they grow up, and I’d bet a good percentage of them say they’d like to be president. I’m sure I wrote something as a six- or seven-year-old saying I wanted to be president. I’m not sure if that means I’m opening up myself to charges that I have been planning to run for president since then, but I guess all is fair in the last month of the Iowa Caucuses…

Update: Obama spokesperson Bill Burton says, “I’m sure tomorrow they’ll attack him for being a flip-flopper because he told his second grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut.”

Not quite, as John Deeth writes today.

Weren’t reading Iowa Indy over the holiday week last week? Here’s what you missed:

Several profiles of candidates’ family members as part of Lynda Waddington’s “All in the Family” series: Cate Edwards, Jill Biden, Craig and Mary Romney, Jackie Dodd, Hunter Biden, and Barbara Richardson. And Doug Burns interviewed Obama’s younger sister, who says her brother is a feminist.

Our Republican Power Rankings.

Sen. Barack Obama’s thoughts on how his presidency could end the culture war.

Former GOP Congressman Jim Leach praises Obama, Biden, Dodd, Richardson, and Ron Paul in an exclusive interview.

I interviewed some University of Iowa students on camera about the caucus date and how the presidential campaign is shaping up on campus.

One wonders if Cyclone Conservatives posted this photo on purpose as part of a Thanksgiving Day message.

It happens to be the photo of President George W. Bush serving our troops a plastic turkey, from Thanksgiving of 2003.

There’s a constant tendency to report on poll numbers when they come out that even I succumb to, despite having noted in Iowa Independent’s Power Rankings that “No poll is definitive, nor is any one columnist or pundit. Determining which Iowans will show up to participate in a caucus on a wintry January night — one which, this year, will be only days after New Year’s — is nearly impossible. And pollsters find it difficult to include second choice support — a very significant factor in caucus results — in their horse race numbers at all.”

The new Washington Post/ABC News poll of Iowa Democrats is so interesting that I’m going to write about it. Sen. Barack Obama leads with 30%. Sen. Hillary Clinton comes in with 26%, and former Sen. John Edwards has 22%.

Excepting the intellectual inconsistency embodied in this sort of post, here’s some evidence I will selectively glean from the poll write-up to vindicate my power rankings, which put Edwards over Obama over Clinton:

On second-choice support:

Among Edwards supporters, 43 percent said they would make Obama their second choice, up from 32 percent who said so in July.

There was also some movement among Obama supporters: in the new poll, 32 percent said they would choose Clinton second, down from 45 percent four months ago.

According to Democratic Party rules, a candidate must draw at least 15 percent at each caucus site for the votes to count; if that fails to happen, their supporters often throw their votes to a more viable contender. Combining the second-choice picks of candidates outside the top three, 34 percent would select Obama, 28 percent Edwards and only 15 percent Clinton.

On demographics:

Obama is running even with Clinton among women in Iowa, drawing 32 percent to her 31 percent, despite the fact that the Clinton campaign has built its effort around attracting female voters.

…

Obama has made key gains. His support is up 8 percentage points since July among voters aged 45 and older — who comprised two-thirds of Iowa caucus-goers in 2004.

And despite widespread impressions that Obama is banking on unreliable first-time voters, Clinton depends on them heavily as well: About half of her supporters say they have never attended a caucus before, compared with 43 percent of first-timers for Obama and 24 percent for Edwards. Previous attendance is one of the strongest indicators of who will turn out to vote.

On vacuous, meaningless abstractions which are useful only insofar as they are another way of asking whom a voter plans to caucus for:

At the heart of the Democratic race has been the dichotomy between strength and experience (qualities emphasized by Clinton, Richardson and Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd) and the ability to introduce a new approach to governing (as Obama and Edwards have promised to do).

Iowa Democrats are tilting toward change: 55 percent reported that a “new direction and new ideas” are their top priority, compared with 33 percent who favored “strength and experience.” That is a shift from July, when 49 percent sought change and 39 percent experience.

Nationally, Clinton is viewed as a candidate of change, winning 41 percent of Democrats who say they are seeking a new direction in a recent Post-ABC poll. But in Iowa, Obama dominates the so-called “change” vote, winning 43 percent of those voters, compared with 25 percent for Edwards and 17 percent for Clinton.

Still, Clinton retains a comfortable lead among Iowa voters who consider strength and experience more important, with 38 percent compared with 19 percent for Edwards, 18 percent for Richardson and 12 percent for Obama, according to the new survey.

On the quality of the poll: pollsters tend to ask questions about how often campaigns have reached out to respondents to measure how active the campaign season has become. I like to read those results in the opposite way: if a poll measures that only a small percentage of respondents have gotten campaign phone calls or attended candidate events, I know their voter screen is far too broad. If almost all of the respondents have received campaign phone calls, then I know the poll targeted the same universe as the campaigns, making it a better voter screen. This screen appears pretty decent, although no screen is anywhere close to perfect:

Regardless of whom they support, voters reported being deeply involved in — or at least bombarded by — the campaign well ahead of the final stretch. More than half said they had already attended a campaign event. More than four in 10 had been to a candidate’s Web site; two in 10 had donated money. One in three said they had personally spoken to or shaken hands with one of the Democratic candidates. Eight in 10 report receiving calls from one or more of the campaigns, 38 percent have been e-mailed. And an overwhelming nine out of 10 people who attended a previous caucus said they had already been called by one of the campaigns.

In last night’s Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton was prepared for anything her opponents threw at her. The first ten minutes set the tone of the rest of the night, as both Clinton herself and her fans in the audience slapped down any overt attempts to criticize her. It changed the dynamics of the whole event, to the point that it was clear the strategies Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards had planned to use would not work. They were thrown off guard, because they couldn’t criticize Clinton if they were going to get booed every time.

When the debate ended, I fully expected the group of University of Iowa Democrats I was watching with to agree: Clinton won the night hands down. But I was surprised to hear that the majority of the self-selected group of interested young people picked a different winner.

When I stood up in front of the group, the first thing I asked was how many undecideds there were in the audience. Of about 10 students present, only one was undecided. The rest were committed: one for Clinton, a couple for Obama, and a few for Gov. Bill Richardson. Only the Clinton supporter thought that his candidate won the night, although others were willing to admit that she did well.

The rest of the group — literally every other student we spoke to who was willing to pick a winner — picked Sen. Joe Biden. The meme that Biden’s support comes only folks who share his hair color — something which I myself have perpetuated from time to time — seems to be false. The students I interviewed made a compelling case: this was the first debate where Biden was given enough time to really resonate with voters who had not had a chance to see him in person in Iowa. His answers were good, and he took a lot of “experience” ground — not to mention “leadership” and “statesmanship” ground — from Richardson last night.

Obama, who some believe I am shilling for, had a weak performance, as did Edwards. Just as they turned the tables on Clinton and threw her off guard in Philadelphia, Clinton and the audience turned the tables back on them in Las Vegas. It proved, if nothing else, that debates are very volatile, and no amount of preparation is enough when the wind shifts. This time, it was Clinton’s challengers who were caught downwind.

But the Biden story is, I think, the most interesting one. And although the debate wasn’t enough to convert any of the committed students to Biden’s side last night, almost universally they named the Delaware senator as their second choice.

We conducted a lot of video interviews with students, and we’re putting those together into stories as we speak. They’ll go up on Iowa Independent soon.

Tonight, I’ll be in Iowa City on the campus of the University of Iowa for the CNN/Nevada Democratic presidential debate. Iowa Independent has gotten together a group of undecided Iowa college students to watch the debate, and I’ll be asking them questions in a focus group-style discussion afterwards. Video of it will be available first thing in the morning.

Of course, the prolific Douglas Burns will have his usual post-debate analysis up tonight after it ends, so we’ll be all over it. But if you want to know what’s going on at the actual debate, Taylor Marsh will be there providing live updates.

I’m going to be the guest on Wisconsin Public Radio in about two minutes. I’ll be talking with host Kathleen Dunn for the 9 o’clock hour during the program she calls “All Things Political.” Last time I did it, it was an interesting time. This time, the main topic will be the JJ.

You can listen here.

Update: And in my haste trying to get this post up before 9AM today, I neglected to mention that I will also be talking with the illustrious Taylor Marsh on her show this afternoon, as I do every Wednesday. She has been tracking the negative message testing calls that two Iowans who support Edwards received better than anyone actually in Iowa. I have my own theories about the call, which I hope to get a chance to post about later in the day, but my guess is that the question will come up on Taylor’s show.

A lot of folks seem to think this story is the worst thing Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign could have ever done. Others think it’s no big deal at all. Here’s how I see it:

First, I am not surprised by it in the least. The Clinton campaign is scripted, from beginning to end, and it has phenomenal message discipline. Throughout the summer, national press were complementing it for these reasons. The first time Clinton ever got a somewhat uncomfortable question in Iowa was the famous Iran question in early October. As soon as it happened, the national media exploded with stories about it for a week. I had personally witnessed other candidates — including Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards — answer much more uncomfortable questions as early as May, and none of the press at those events even took notice of them, because they weren’t out of the ordinary at those candidates’ events.

Had Clinton taken as many off-message questions as her opponents, she would not have had the kind of message control she exhibited. And Iowans are notorious for asking off-message questions, so either Clinton had incredible luck or she had a little help. Let’s stop pretending like we didn’t at least have the thought in the back of our minds that planting questions might have been one cog in the Clinton campaign’s well-oiled machine. There are plenty of political operatives (including some whom I respect) who really don’t think it is always an immoral tactic, because to a certain extent everything a campaign does is contrived.

That said, the story is damning to the Clinton campaign for two reasons:

1. The Clinton campaign lied about it. Spokesperson Mo Elithee told Fox News, “This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again.” And yet the questioner-in-question, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, said that the staffer she talked to had a campaign-printed list of questions to plant in a CNN interview last night. If the events that occurred are not “standard policy,” why print out worksheet to assist staffers in doing it? In addition, why did Clinton say in her answer that she receives the question from young people a lot in Iowa if this was the only instance where her campaign sought out a young person to ask it?
2. The story plays into the general uneasiness Iowans feel about her campaign’s hesitancy to ask questions. Contrary to Marc Ambinder’s assumption, Clinton had not “been asked (more than) a 1,000 questions by different Democratic voters,” unless she was spending hours answering questions on the stump in New Hampshire. As of mid October, Clinton had not taken questions more than about a dozen times in Iowa (she seemed to prefer shaking hands and talking to voters privately on rope lines for a few minutes after her speeches). Assuming there were six questions per event where questions were permitted, that’s a total of about 72 questions taken publicly in Iowa (not counting debates and forums, which are scripted by other people). If she’s only going to take 72 questions (compared to closer to 1,000 for each of the other candidates), Iowans feel strongly that they better be good, and this story proves that at least some of them weren’t.

The practice of planting questions, which is itself a fairly benign practice, is not the only thing at issue here. In reality, it was only the beginning, and it only mattered at all because of the context.

Yeah, it’s, like, a day late. Perhaps a dollar short. But here are some of the more interesting tidbits from the 2007 Jefferson Jackson Dinner:

• Unlike 2003, there were no dirigibles in the house. Sen. Chris Dodd had one miniature blimp flying outside, but it carried no new slogan.
• Sen. Hillary Clinton’s new line, “Turn Up The Heat!”, is kind of strange. Its imagery is similar to Sen. Barack Obama’s “Fired up! Ready to go!” chant, which led to unfortunate contrasts because of Clinton’s relative difficulty riling up a crowd with call and response. At the same time, it played right into Obama’s criticism of Clinton — that she’s too partisan. For when Clinton suggests that we “Turn Up The Heat!”, she thinks we should be doing it to the Republicans.
• Clinton stood and applauded with others at her table when Gov. Bill Richardson said that his fellow Democratic candidates should stop attacking each other.
• A few folks have now suggested that they thought House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have been tipsy by the end of the evening. I’m not sure if I agree, but there was definitely a lot of drinking going on during the event, which stretched on much longer than scheduled.
• No candidate fit his or her speech into the allotted amount of time. Any threats issued by the IDP about cutting off microphones (was this just a rumor?) were empty.
• Former Sen. John Edwards’s speech was good, but it seemed so long ago by the end of the night that he was at a disadvantage when pundits began declaring winners.
• That said, Obama’s speech was perhaps the closest we have seen to his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech yet. When he is in front of a crowd of 9,000, he is more at home than anyone. This doesn’t translate very well to small town hall events, but if he wins the nomination, this may be the only kind of speech he ever has to give.
• Obama beat all of the other campaigns combined at the sign war, if you can even call thousands of people marching together a “sign war.” I thought the marching thing was hokey when they did it at the Harkin Steak Fry, but I’m beginning to see its value. When General Obama and his army took the hill on their way into the auditorium, the faces of other campaigns’ staff displayed a mix of awe, resignation, and indignation.

I’m liveblogging, along with several other Iowa Independent folks, over there. It is shaping up to be an exciting night.

Sen. Hillary Clinton will unveil her new call-and-response gimmick — “Turn Up The Heat!” — perhaps in an effort to steal thunder from Sen. Barack Obama’s “Fire It Up! Ready To Go!” Both campaigns will have enormous crowds, as will former Sen. John Edwards. Gov. Bill Richardson appears to be the only other candidate who bought enough tickets to have a whole section for his supporters. Sen. Chris Dodd appears to have a small section in the cheap seats, and we cannot spot one for Sen. Joe Biden at all. Still, all of the aforementioned candidates are here, and they all have some supporters in attendance.

Follow along with the action here.