Most voters want it. The candidates all promise it. The presidential race hinges on it.

But nobody can quite agree on the meaning of the single most important word of the election: Change.

With the nation at war and facing a raft of domestic problems, voters are demanding a shift from the status quo in Washington. November will be a change election.

But what kind of change? On the Democratic side in particular, that question is at the heart of an unusually competitive race - and it prompted two leading candidates to dig at each other in separate interviews with The Associated Press.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois suggested that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would be no more than a "caretaker" president who represents change only in the sense of replacing a Republican with a Democrat in the White House.

Clinton responded coldly, "I think it matters who is president."

On the campaign trail, Obama is the image of change - young, black and new to Washington. He defines change as the ability to overcome partisan gridlock to solve the nation's problems, uniting Democrats, Republicans and independents "who've lost faith in their Washington leaders but want to believe again (and) who desperately want something new."

Clinton defines change as something important that comes only with experience, a twist of logic that her own advisers concede is a tough sell. It's hard to be for change as a veteran of the status quo.

She's trying to finesse the argument by closing the Iowa campaign with a focus on her experience - 35 years in public life, mostly as the first lady of Arkansas and the nation.

"I think certainly the question is who is prepared from Day One to step in and address all of the challenges we face plus all the unpredictable issues that cross the president's desk," Clinton said in an interview with the AP between campaign stops.

Her latest television ad casts Clinton an agent of change ("a new beginning") who can cope with war abroad and anxiety at home ("a steady hand"). She would be the nation's first female president, which is in itself a major change.

Though it's fair to wonder how much more prepared she is for the presidency than her chief rivals - having never run a major organization or been considered a major player in foreign policy - Clinton gets the benefit of the doubt from voters. A recent ABC News-Washington Post poll in Iowa found that she wallops Obama on the question of who has the most experience - 49 percent to 8 percent.

She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, cast Obama as too raw for the presidency. Their argument carries weight with voters, including some Obama admirers, who wonder whether he's trying to move too fast from the Illinois legislature to the U.S. Senate to the White House.

Obama can point to modest record of achievement in Illinois and Washington, but nothing on his resume sets him apart from the field. Still, he says he's not the risk. "The real gamble in this election," Obama said in his speech, "is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result."

A third leading Democrat, former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, is the white-hot advocate for change. He argues that Clinton is too close to special interests and Obama is too accommodating to them. "Compromise and conciliation is the academic theory of change. It just doesn't work in the real world," Edwards said in the text of an address prepared for delivery Friday. "Fighting for conviction is the historic reality of change."

In the AP interview, Clinton was asked how her definition of change differed from her rivals.

"I believe everyone talks about wanting change but the real challenge is who can deliver change and positive results," she said. "Some people think you can bring about change by demanding it and some people think you can bring about change by hoping for it. I think you bring about change by working hard for it."

In her view, Edwards only talks about change, Obama only dreams of it and she's the only one who would produce it.

Not so, said Obama. How does his definition of change differ from Clinton's? "I think Senator Clinton's argument is that what ails us today is the Republicans are in charge and once George Bush is out of office there will be sort of a return to the policies of the Clinton era and that will solve our problems," he told the AP. "My argument is that we need more fundamental change than just a change of political parties in the White House."

"This election is about whether or not we simply settle because we don't really think things can change that much, so we want a caretaker who can do things a little better than Bush," Obama said. "Or are we really shaking things up and making them better?"

Polls suggest the race is a dead heat - that Democratic voters in Iowa are evenly divided between Clinton, Edwards and Obama and their competing views on how to reform Washington.

That will change.

Associated Press, December 27, 2007