Clinton apologises as aide implies Obama faces 'drug deal' question

However, his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was forced to apologise to him after one of her aides suggested that the issue would be used against him by the Republicans.

The insinuation that as a black man, Mr Obama would have to overcome negative campaigning asking whether he had ever been a drug dealer, was the latest indication that the Clinton campaign is deeply worried by its rival's rise in the polls.

In an average of recent polls from Iowa, Mr Obama enjoys a two-point advantage, while Mrs Clinton's once-formidable lead in New Hampshire has been whittled away to two points – a matter of grave concern to a candidate who had planned to campaign as the "inevitable" choice.

Mrs Clinton apologised to Mr Obama at Washington's Reagan National airport yesterday as the pair flew to Des Moines for the last debate before next month's critical Iowa caucuses.

With that aura of invincibility now tarnished, the Clinton campaign is prepared for a more bruising campaign style.

The saga began on Wednesday, when Billy Shaheen, the co-chair of Mrs Clinton's New Hampshire campaign, told the Washington Post that Mr Obama's drug use would be red meat to Republicans.

"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight … and one of the things they're certainly going to jump on is his drug use," said Mr Shaheen, whose wife Jeanne is a former Democratic governor of New Hampshire.

"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" he said. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

Though white presidential candidates such as George Bush and Bill Clinton have been asked about drug use, they were never subject to accusations or insinuations of drug-dealing.

The Obama campaign turned the controversy to its advantage, with a fund-raising e-mail sent to supporters arguing that: "The only way to stop these kinds of tired, desperate attacks is to demonstrate very clearly that they have a real cost to Senator Clinton's campaign."

Mr Shaheen did his best to kill the story, issuing a statement distancing himself from the Clinton campaign. "I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorised by the campaign in any way," he said, while a Clinton spokesman also reiterated that Mr Sheehan was freelancing and not speaking for the campaign.

However, Mr Shaheen's comments were on a par with the Clinton campaign's increasingly aggressive and hostile approach to Mr Obama. Anticipating the tougher proving ground of the campaign's final weeks, Mrs Clinton cracked that "now the fun part starts".

But some of the attacks on Mr Obama have arguably been counter-productive. When the freshman Illinois senator said that unlike some politicians, he was not running for president as the culmination of a long-term plan – a subtle reference to Mrs Clinton's reputation for planning and calculation – the Clinton campaign unearthed a kindergarten essay Mr Obama had written entitled "I want to be President".

Earlier this week a Clinton staffer in Iowa resigned after admitting that she had spread scurrilous e-mails that alleged that Mr Obama – whose middle name is Hussain – was a Muslim.

The Iowa and New Hampshire primaries are the first in the run-up to the presidential election and the results have been known to make or break candidates.

Advisers to Mrs Clinton acknowledge there has been uneasiness as Mr Obama has risen in national and several early state polls. But they insist their master blueprint – emphasising Mrs Clinton's experience, toughness and ability to withstand Republican attacks – remains sound.

"This is ultimately going to come down to two questions for undecided voters: Which is the Democrat best positioned to win in November, and which one is best qualified to start from the very first day and give the country a fresh start," said Tom Vilsack, a former Iowa Democratic governor who serves as national co-chair of Mrs Clinton's campaign.

"The only thing you can do to insulate yourself is to make sure your organisation is airtight and to make sure the people who are with you are with you through the end," said Mrs Clinton's New Hampshire director, Nick Clemons.

In the past week, the Clinton campaign already had volunteers going door-to-door in New Hampshire with fliers criticising Mr Obama on health care. Possible TV adverts to run against him have also been previewed in the state.

Asked about the Clinton campaign's literature, Mr Obama said he had not seen it but believed it was "entirely legitimate" to compare candidates' positions on health care and other matters.

A POLITICALLY INCONVENIENT STORY – BUT I WOULD WRITE IT AGAIN, PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL INSISTS

IN HIS best-selling memoir Dreams From My Father, written 11 years ago, Barack Obama acknowledged his cocaine use. "Junkie. Pothead. That's where I'd been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man," he wrote.

"The highs hadn't been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. Not by then, anyway. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind, something that could flatten out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory."

At high school and then at college, Mr Obama wrote that he found there were times when "pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack (heroin], though".

In a preface to the latest edition of the book, he says he would have written the story the same way "even if certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically".

During his campaign for the US Senate in 2004, Mr Obama said he felt it important to acknowledge his drug use to help "young people who are already in circumstances that are far more difficult than mine to know that you can make mistakes and still recover".

He added: "I think that, at this stage, my life is an open book, literally and figuratively. Voters can make a judgment as to whether dumb things that I did when I was a teenager are relevant to the work that I've done since that time."

Speaking to high-school students earlier this month, Mr Obama again said he was hardly a model student and had experimented with drugs and alcohol.

"You know, I made some bad decisions that I've actually written about. You know, got into drinking. I experimented with drugs," he said. "There was a whole stretch of time that I didn't really apply myself a lot. It wasn't until I got out of high school and went to college that I started realising, 'Man, I wasted a lot of time'."