Clinton says Obama campaign "distorting" comments on race, Obama says that's "ludicrous"

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that Barack Obama's campaign had distorted some of her comments to make racial tension a theme of the presidential contest.

"This is an unfortunate story line the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully," the former first lady said in a spirited Sunday appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I don't think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it's not about race."

Obama, who hopes to be America's first black president, called Clinton's allegations "ludicrous."

Both New York Sen. Clinton, who is campaigning to be the first woman president, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have engaged in damage control this week after black leaders criticized them for comments made shortly before the New Hampshire primary last Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying U.S. civil rights icon Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality was realized only when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while Bill Clinton said Illinois Sen. Obama was telling a "fairy tale" about his opposition to the Iraq war.

Bill Clinton has appeared on several black radio programs to say he was referring to Obama's record on opposition to the Iraq war, not on his effort to become the first black president.

Clinton taped the show Sunday before appearances in South Carolina, whose Jan. 26 primary will be the first in America's state-by-state nominating process to include a significant representation of black voters. Blacks were 50 percent of primary voters in the state in 2004 and the number is expected to swell this time.

At an awards dinner Sunday in Atlanta celebrating black achievement, Michelle Obama said Sunday her husband is the person America needs in the White House right now and was critical of anyone who would "dismiss this moment as an illusion, a fairytale." He is the right candidate "not because of the color of his skin, but because of the quality and consistency of his character," she said.

As evidence the Obama campaign had pushed the story, Clinton advisers pointed to a memo written by an Obama staffer compiling examples of comments by Clinton and her surrogates that could be construed as racially insensitive. The memo later surfaced on a handful of political Web sites.

Obama later called Clinton's accusations "ludicrous," and said he found Clinton's comments about King to be ill-advised and unfortunate.

"If Senator Clinton wants to be distracted by the sorts of political point-scoring that was evident today then that is going to be her prerogative," Obama said.

Another rival, John Edwards, added his voice to the chorus of criticism of Clinton's comments about King.

"I must say I was troubled recently to see a suggestion that real change that came not through the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King but through a Washington politician. I fundamentally disagree with that," Edwards told more than 200 people gathered at a predominantly black Baptist church in Sumter, South Carolina.

During the televised interview on Sunday, Hillary Clinton praised King as one of the people she "admired most in the world," and suggested his record of activism stood in stark contrast to Obama's, who spent years as a Chicago community activist.

"Dr. King didn't just give speeches. He marched, he organized, he protested, he was gassed, he was beaten, he was jailed," she said, noting King had campaigned for Johnson because he recognized the need to elect a president who could enact civil rights into law.

While Clinton praised Obama's eloquence, she also stepped up her contention that his record did not match his rhetoric.

She noted that while he had spoken out eloquently against the war in 2002 before coming to the Senate, he voted repeatedly to fund the war once in office.

"If you are part of American political history, you know that speeches are essential to frame an issue, to inspire, and lift up," Clinton said. "But when the cameras are gone and when the lights are out, what happens next?"

Obama scoffed at her suggestion of an inconsistent record on the war. Campaigning in Las Vegas, he said he voted for war funding out of an obligation to support the troops, and noted other prominent Democrats, such as liberal Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who voted the same way.

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Associated Press writers Philip Elliott and Seanna Adcox contributed to this report from Columbia, South Carolina, and AP Writer Kathleen Hennessy contributed from Las Vegas.