They hope they’ve got his number

WASHINGTON — As children sleep safely in their beds, a menace is set loose in the world -- and a phone rings in the White House. “Your vote will decide who answers the call,” says a narrator, “whether it’s someone . . . tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.”

In her newest television ad, released Friday, Hillary Rodham Clinton shows who should answer the 3 a.m. call: She is pictured picking up the phone, confident and businesslike. Implied is that Barack Obama, her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, would be less prepared for a moment of crisis.

It is the type of attack that Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, is hearing from sides. As he establishes himself as the Democratic front-runner, both Clinton and leading Republicans have settled on national security as his biggest point of vulnerability.

In recent days, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, has accused Obama of misunderstanding the role of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and President Bush has implicitly scolded Obama for saying he would meet with foreign dictators such as Cuba’s Raul Castro.

Clinton has criticized Obama for failing to convene a subcommittee he leads in order to review Afghanistan policy, even though he often accuses the Bush administration of “taking its eye off the ball” in that Central Asian country to focus on Iraq. Obama has responded that he only became chairman in early 2007, as the presidential campaign was beginning.

On the campaign trail Friday, Clinton questioned Obama’s qualifications to be commander in chief and accused him of abandoning the stand he took in 2002 when he delivered a speech opposing the invasion of Iraq.

“There’s a big difference between giving speeches about national security and giving orders as commander in chief,” said the New York senator, surrounded by retired military leaders during an appearance in Waco, Texas. “There’s a big difference between delivering a speech at an antiwar rally as a state senator and picking up that phone in the White House at 3 a.m. in the morning to deal with an international crisis.”

Clinton’s sharp words marked a turn in the Democratic race, which had focused largely on domestic matters such as healthcare and job creation in the run-up to Tuesday’s crucial primary elections in Texas and Ohio.

Her new strategy, coupled with the heightened attacks from Republicans, also foreshadows a continued line of attack against Obama, should he win the nomination.

Despite the unpopularity of Iraq policies backed by Bush and McCain, national security again looms as a potential weakness for Democrats, even if Obama’s opposition to the war has helped him in his party’s primary. Hoping to paint Obama as naive about foreign threats, GOP strategists say they are increasingly optimistic about a contest pitting McCain, the Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war, against Obama, who has never served in the military.

That point was underscored this week in a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg survey. Even though about 60% of registered voters in the survey said it had not been worth going to war in Iraq, about half of registered voters said that McCain, a stalwart supporter of the war, was better able to handle the situation in Iraq than were Obama or Clinton.

Only about one-third of those surveyed said one of the Democratic candidates could handle the war better than McCain. The poll found even wider advantages for McCain on the question of who could best protect the country from terrorism.

The GOP’s general election strategy was foreshadowed Friday by Freedom’s Watch, a group supporting the Iraq war and funded by wealthy Republicans, which distributed a mass e-mail attacking Obama’s foreign policy positions. The e-mail linked to a video titled “In 52 Secs Why Barack Obama Cannot Win a General Election.” The video features Obama talking about his opposition to the Iraq war and to a national missile defense system, and about his support for deep cuts in nuclear weapons.

“We need to get out the word about Senator Obama’s radical plan that would leave America less safe,” said the e-mail, signed by Bradley A. Blakeman, a former Bush aide who helped create Freedom’s Watch to build support for the president’s Iraq policies.

Earlier this week, Obama had been the target of GOP attacks designed to raise uneasiness about his record and his foreign policy credentials.

Following an endorsement of Obama this week by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who lives in Obama’s hometown of Chicago, the Tennessee Republican Party issued a press release titled “Anti-Semites for Obama.” The press release referred to Obama with his middle name of Hussein.

McCain, in his recent statements, has signaled that he intends to make national security the central theme of his campaign. That would be a gamble, given that the war remains unpopular. Democrats expected this fall to face an electorate so fed up with Bush’s policies in Iraq that it would reward Democrats who want to end the war. Both Clinton and Obama have pledged a quick withdrawal, though both have hinted at keeping some kind of military presence there.

Obama and his aides Friday appeared to welcome the national security debate as a chance to paint Clinton with the same brush as pro-war Republicans. Obama described Clinton’s new attacks as “the kind that play on people’s fears to scare up votes.”

“The question is not about picking up the phone,” he said, referring to Clinton’s new ad. “The question is: What kind of judgment will you make when you answer? We’ve had a red-phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Sen. Clinton gave the wrong answer. George Bush gave the wrong answer. John McCain gave the wrong answer.”

The Obama campaign also began re-airing a television ad featuring one of his prominent backers, retired Gen. Merrill A. “Tony” McPeak, crediting Obama with demonstrating the proper judgment in opposing the Iraq invasion.

Later, McPeak joined former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig on a conference call with reporters in which they poked fun at Clinton’s claim to be the most experienced candidate. McPeak, alluding to turbulence in Clinton’s campaign and Obama’s comparatively smooth operation, said that running for president is a lot like marshaling a war.

“If you want to know what kind of commander in chief Barack is going to be, why don’t you compare the campaigns that have been run here?” McPeak said. “Is it a panic situation? Crisis-driven? Are you firing people? Are you loaning yourself money?”

McPeak seems to relish the role of attack dog, and he would likely be a chief defender of Obama’s security credentials in the general election campaign. In a recent interview, he suggested that he would not hesitate to take aim at even McCain, the former Navy pilot widely viewed as a war hero for the years he spent in a North Vietnamese prison after being shot down.

“In a perfect world, Obama might have a little more [experience], maybe even some service in uniform,” McPeak said in the interview.

“But like I used to tell John: You don’t get to be a hero by getting shot down, you get to be a hero by shooting the other guy down.”

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Times staff writers Michael Finnegan and Mark Z. Barabak in Texas and Dan Morain in Chicago contributed to this report.