Opinion: Hillary Clinton advisor: Barack Obama’s “clinging” to a certain issue

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Barack Obama refuses to be put on the defensive as the odd presidential candidate out in the great (though temporal) debate over the federal gasoline tax, steadfastly opposing the call by both Hillary Clinton and John McCain for suspending the levy through the summer.

In Indianapolis today, Obama derided the proposal as the type of ‘phony’ idea that politicians often promote ‘to win elections instead of actually solving problems.’ (For more, see this story by Times reporter Peter Nicholas.)

Camp Clinton, however, clearly likes the dog it’s got in this hunt. Not only did did the candidate herself press her case today in North Carolina, but consider this quip by one of her campaign advisors, Doug Hattaway, to Times reporter Noam Levey: ‘The Obama campaign seems bitter about sliding in the polls and they’re clinging to these gas tax attacks.’

Hattaway, of course, was making a play on words now associated with Obama’s mini-sociological dissection of small-town life. But Hattaway also might have been feeling chipper about the gas-tax issue because of where he was standing at the time -- the Auto Racing Hall of Fame, in Mooresville, N.C.

Hard to imagine anybody in his immediate vicinity -- or for miles around -- whispering a word against anything that might lower NASCAR racing costs.

-- Don Frederick