Strategic Ambiguity

Barack Obama:

Talking to a friend the other day, Obama stated the obvious about Tuesday night’s debate (9-11 p.m. ET, airing on MSNBC and streaming live on msnbc.com). “I’ve got to do something in Philly,” he said.

Obama chief strategist David Axelrod on NBC's "Today":

first of all, let me dispute one of the premises of andrea's piece. we've always -- i know there's a fascination about national polls, particularly in the national political community, but we've always known this race goes through iowa and we've spent most of our time there in the last eight months. and as of yesterday, the university of iowa poll shows we're in a dead even race with Senator Clinton. so i don't feel the same sense of urgency that was expressed in that piece to step out of character.