Clinton not winning points with 'anything it takes' strategy

WASHINGTON — Talk about not being able to catch a break. To pummel a boxing metaphor, it was Barack Obama who got tagged with a roundhouse right, flush on the chin — but it was Hillary Clinton, from early indications, who ended up nursing a sore jaw and wondering what it was that hit her.

A week of hearing the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's jeremiads more or less continuously on cable news channels seemed certain to hurt Obama politically. Indeed it did — but only slightly, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. The candidate who really suffered, according to the same poll, was Clinton.

Clinton must look back at dodging bullets in Bosnia and bringing peace to Northern Ireland as mere walks in the park compared to this crazy campaign. Then again, accurate recollection hasn't been her strong point of late.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday, found that the percentage of voters with negative views of Obama increased by 4 points in the last two weeks, from 28 percent to 32 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage with positive views of Obama declined by 2 points, from 51 percent to 49 percent. It's hard to attribute this slippage to anything other than the controversy over Wright's sermons. All in all, it wasn't what you'd call a great fortnight for Obama.

Surprisingly, though, Clinton's was considerably worse. The percentage of voters holding negative views of her increased by 5 points, from 43 percent to 48 percent, while the percentage of voters who had positive views of Clinton declined a full 8 points, from 45 percent to 37 percent.

I've been through the rest of the numbers in this poll, as well as those in a recent CBS News survey — and won't cite them here for fear of running out of space before I get to the point. Take my word that Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech on race relations, generally but not universally well received, probably helped minimize any loss of support from the Wright controversy.

What's not unambiguously explained in the polls is why Clinton, basically a bystander, took a bigger hit in popularity than the guy who had the pastor problem.

The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey was taken before Clinton's claim of having braved sniper fire upon landing in Bosnia in 1996 was proved to be untrue, so that can't have been the reason why her negative ratings jumped and her positive ratings fell. And when the poll was being taken, Clinton hadn't even said anything about Obama's relationship with Wright.