As Hillary Clinton looks to become the second Comeback Kid in her immediate family, her campaign is trying a new approach. She kicked off her New Hampshire campaign by sticking to the stump speech that she relied on in Iowa, but that's changed. Perhaps sensing that her stump speech was, in effect, third-rate, Clinton delivered very brief remarks at the beginning of her campaign appearances today and spent most of the time taking questions from New Hampshire voters.

At Merrimack Valley High School in the town of Penacook this morning, Clinton spoke for roughly ten minutes before turning to the very substantial crowd for questions. Her remarks did have a point, however: three times in those ten minutes, she managed to say that she was the only candidate ready to lead "from day one" or "from the first day." The speakers that came before her also used the phrases three times, in equally brief comments. Perhaps the Clinton camp took a hard look at the strategy from Iowa—emphasize biography, emphasize the '90s, emphasize work ethic—and determined that only the "day one" sound bite was worth keeping.

And it's just as well. At both the Penacook appearance and a later one in Durham, Clinton was masterful in the question and answer sessions. The questions were easy; examples included "What are the top two reasons to vote for you?" and "I've been frustrated by the deceptively named No Child Left Behind. What will you do about it?" Clinton provided very long answers—an answer ostensibly on social security touched on middle class incomes, health care, energy, and the Republican war on science, and lasted over 10 minutes—that included smart tangents and acknowledgments of important sub-issues. For example, when asked a question about rising health care costs by a woman who claimed to be the caretaker of both her parents and her children, Clinton pointed out that "the most difficult time of day for families is often three to six" and that "you can get more help from the government putting parents in nursing homes than you can for keeping them in your own home." In another discussion, she pointed out dental hygiene's connections to heart health and infections all over the body. If other candidates have an appreciation of the issues that is this in-depth, they don't show it on the campaign trail.

And that may be the point of the new all-questions strategy. It allows Clinton to display the breadth and depth of her knowledge. Her ability to make reference to past battles and former achievements underscores her experience even if it isn't a central focus.

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Washington is fundamentally broken. It cannot deliver what the public demands: health care coverage for all, energy independence, good schools. And we're not going to change Washington by handing more power to the same-old people already there. Hillary Clinton says she has experience, but that's not what the voters want. They want someone who can bring real change to the nation's capital.

Is that Barack Obama campaigning in New Hampshire? No, it's Mitt Romney. At an "Ask Mitt Anything" meeting on Saturday morning in Derry, Romney was channeling the Democratic victor in Iowa. After finishing second in Iowa, where he had invested so much political and actual capital, Romney, good businessman that he is, took stock of the results and saw that the political market is demanding not experience but change. So he has recalibrated his sales campaign. "The message I read into" the Iowa results, he told the assembled in Derry, is that Hillary Clinton and John McCain were "handily rejected by people with messages of change." In that category he included Mike Huckabee, the GOP winner of Iowa, Obama, the Democratic winner, and...himself. Though Romney had finished 9 points behind Huckabee, he was claiming he had not been spurned by the voters and was a fellow rider of that change wave.

This is rather imaginative bookkeeping. But you can't blame a CEO for trying. And Romney appears to be in a tight (and bitter) race with McCain in New Hampshire. So he's attempting to hijack the Obama magic and discredit McCain as just another do-nothing Washingtonian.

At the Derry event, Romney stood near a giant sign proclaiming "Washington Is Broken" and unveiled a to-do list for the U.S. government. It included almost every idea that any candidate has proposed during this campaign: protect America, end illegal immigration, reduce taxes, cut pork, provide health insurance for everyone, end dependence on foreign oil, grow the economy, fix Social Security, put people ahead of "selfish interest." He was covering all the bases. And he discussed each as if he were conducting a PowerPoint presentation. Romney also noted that much of this would not be possible unless "we get the lobbyists off the shoulders" of the legislators. With this remark, not only was he swiping Obama's message, he was also shoplifting McCain's and John Edwards'. Talk about a hostile takeover.

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Dennis Kucinich has taken a lot of flack for saying that he once saw an unidentified flying object near Shirley MacLaine's house back in 1982. The Wall Street Journal just did a front-page story on it, adding to the Kucinich-as-silly-person storyline. But what if he really did see something—just not an alien spaceship? That's the skeptical-yet-speculative theory being floated over at Cannonfire:

The sighting took place in Washington state near Mt. Ranier, where the "flying saucer" craze was born.

Judging from the description of the three vehicles witnessed that day, I theorize that the party saw a test of prototype UAVs, or drones. Such unmanned reconnaissance craft were little-known at the time. They are well-known nowadays, since they play a major role in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although the early development of unmanned craft is not easy for outsiders to trace, these devices do have a long history. Marilyn Monroe, in the days before she had that name, once worked for a company producing the first mass-produced UAVs.

The Kucinich sighting took place in Graham, Washington, situated directly between Mount Ranier and McChord Air Force Base. (The mountain is some twenty miles away from the base.) The report indicates that the craft were flying toward McChord. After the flyover, Kucinich's party saw military helicopters in the area.

Then how to explain MacLaine's claim that during the sighting Kucinich felt "a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind"? No doubt the Department of Peace would want to keep that love-drone technology in its arsenal.

(Image: Buckeye State Blog)

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So what does Clinton do to regain momentum in New Hampshire? Attack Obama from the right.

Hillary's aides point to Obama's extremely progressive record as a community organizer, state senator and candidate for Congress, his alliances with "left-wing" intellectuals in Chicago's Hyde Park community, and his liberal voting record on criminal defendants' rights as subjects for examination.

And what does Edwards do to keep Obama from getting the whole Iowa bounce? Attack Obama as a corporate tool.

Edwards' staff also immediately began to take shots at Obama: Appearing on MSNBC this morning, Edwards' manager David Bonior described Obama as a sellout to corporate America: "Barack Obama's kind of change is where you sit down and you cut a deal with the corporate world."

Neither of these approaches look all that promising, from first glance. But this could get ugly. (Via Sirotablog)

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