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Hillary Clinton has been forced to take the biggest gamble of her presidential campaign by launching personal attacks on her main rival, Barack Obama, in Iowa, a state famous for its dislike of negative tactics.

With less than a month before the crucial first nominating contest in Iowa, Mrs Clinton has dramatically changed course against a resurgent Mr Obama by questioning his character and honesty, a new strategy that rival campaigns believe could backfire.

A series of recent polls in Iowa show Mr Obama gaining momentum in the state and for the first time opening up a small lead over Mrs Clinton. He has also erased her once-clear advantage among women voters and blue-collar households and is exploiting lingering doubts that Mrs Clinton is too polarising a figure to win a general election.

Mrs Clinton’s aura of invincibility received another blow yesterday with a new Gallup poll indicating that her lead nationally had fallen by 11 points since November. For months, as she retained her status as formidable front-runner, Mrs Clinton pledged not to criticise her Democratic rivals. But since Monday she has begun a string of attacks on Mr Obama in Iowa.

It is a risky move in a state where negative campaigning has destroyed past candidacies, especially as she has taken the job on herself.

Mrs Clinton said that after being criticised for weeks by Mr Obama and John Edwards, the other strong challenger in Iowa, “you cannot just absorb it”. She added later: “We’re into the last month and we’re going to start drawing a contrast.” On the campaign trail in Iowa over the past 48 hours she has accused Mr Obama of offering “false hopes” and of not telling the truth about his health insurance plan.

Asked if she was raising questions about his character, she replied: “It’s beginning to look a lot like that. It really is.” Last night her campaign accused Mr Obama’s staff of dirty tricks in Iowa by directing people to bogus locations for the January 3 caucuses. Bill Burton, Mr Obama’s spokesman, said: “This flat-out falsehood is the latest attack in a silly season where our opponents have promised to stop at nothing in an effort to tarnish Barack Obama’s character.”

Over the weekend Mrs Clinton’s campaign sent reporters a memo implying that Mr Obama lied when he said that he only recently thought about running for the presidency. It cited an essay he wrote in kindergarten entitled “I want to be President”. Mr Obama’s aides derided the move and have since set up a website detailing every attack by Mrs Clinton.

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Labour Secretary and an old friend of the Clintons, wrote in a blog: “This series of slurs does not serve Mrs Clinton well. It will turn off voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country.”

Mr Edwards hopes he will be the main beneficiary of Mrs Clinton’s move. After being her most strident critic for weeks, he has returned to positive campaigning. He remembers well the fight between Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt, the two front-runners in Iowa in 2004. Voters were turned off. Both men’s campaigns collapsed.

Mrs Clinton is gambling that voters will regard her rhetoric as a justified fightback rather than unfair attacks.

A LONG TIME IN POLITICS . . .

Then

“We’re going to stay positive. We’re not going to attack our fellow Democrats.”

(Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, November 11)

Now

“How did running for president become a qualification for being president? Well, this is not a job you can learn about from a book.”

(Mrs Clinton on Barack Obama yesterday)

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