Opinion: Obama seeks to avoid ‘rude’ tag

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What’s behind the concerted effort that the Barack Obama camp launched today to douse fevered speculation that he had intentionally dissed Hillary Clinton on Monday night as lawmakers gathered to hear President Bush’s State of the Union address?

The scramble to insist that no snub was intended partly reflects the reality of wall-to-wall coverage of presidential races in both parties, an environment in which the slightest untoward word or movement gets analyzed and magnified.

But in their response, Obama and his aides almost assuredly recalled how a perceived lack of social graces during a debate in New Hampshire may have hurt him in that state’s primary.

So it was that they moved quickly to provide a simple explanation of what happened Monday night: Blame it on Claire.

That would be Claire McCaskill, the senator from Missouri ...

who recently endorsed Obama and, according to his camp, picked the wrong time to ask him a question, causing him to turn away from Clinton as she reached out to shake the hand of his seatmate at the speech (and new good buddy), Ted Kennedy.

It is especially noteworthy that Obama, who doesn’t often chat with reporters on his campaign airplane, did so today as he flew from Washington to Kansas for some campaign stops.

“I was turning away because Claire asked me a question as Sen. Kennedy was reaching for her,” Obama told The Times’ Maria La Ganga and others in dissecting the supposed snub.

He added: “Sen. Clinton and I have had very cordial relations off the floor and on the floor.’

McCaskill was conveniently on hand to vouch for Obama’s comments.

We can only hope that the query she had for him was really important.

-- Don Frederick