CLEVELAND - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday it was the news media, not her campaign that was driving the controversy over her rival Barack Obama’s uncredited use of speech lines from a friend and political ally.

But the Clinton campaign emailed the Politico.com version of the story to other media, aides discussed it at length in conference calls with reporters and directed them to separate YouTube videos of Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick using nearly identical language.
    
They suggested that Obama’s use of the lines from a 2006 speech by Patrick called into question the premise of the Illinois senator’s campaign, which is based in large part on his inspiring rhetoric. 

“It’s not us making this charge,” Clinton said during an interview with an ABC television affiliate in Honolulu where voters caucus on Tuesday. “It’s the media. The media is finally examining my opponent, which I think is important. I think the media is going to putting forth whatever facts and information it has for voters to assess on their own.” 
        
Obama says the war over words is no big deal.

At a dinner on Saturday night, Obama rejected Clinton’s criticism that he is all talk and no action. “Don’t tell me words don’t matter,” Obama said. “‘I have a dream’ — just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ — just words?’” 

On Sunday night, Politico and the New York Times both reported on the striking similarity between the Patrick and Obama lines. Both publications said “a rival campaign” had highlighted the similarities. 
    
“He is running on his powerful oratory and his promises. And so I think, therefore, it is appropriate when the oratory comes from someone else to point that out and for questions to be raised about it,” Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said later.
    
The New York senator herself told reporters: “If your whole candidacy is about words, they should be your own words.”
 
Obama said Patrick had suggested he use the lines and they frequently traded ideas. He said it would not be a big issue to voters in Wisconsin who vote on Tuesday or those in Ohio who vote on March 4.
    
Weighing in on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Patrick defended Obama and said it was “extravagant charge” that the Illinois senator had lifted his lines.
    
In a tit for tat, Obama accused the Clinton campaign of using some of his catchphrases, including his signature ‘fired up and ready to go.’
    
“That is kind of a silly comparison,” Clinton told a CBS affiliate. “That’s a line that’s been around a long time.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi (Clinton and Patrick at a news conference in October.)