Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- There's a lot of time left in campaign '08 for a list of worst moments, but it may be hard to beat Senator Hillary Clinton's decision to engage Senator Barack Obama in a fierce battle over who's a better friend of Hollywood producer David Geffen.

Geffen, who put on ``Cats'' and founded DreamWorks (``Saving Private Ryan'') with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, raised millions for pal Bill Clinton. Clinton took to hanging out at Geffen's Beverly Hills estate, which is filled with Jackson Pollocks and was once owned by legendary film mogul Jack Warner.

Geffen's sin was to hold a fund-raiser for Obama a few days before supermarket owner Ron Burkle was to throw one for Clinton, forcing the California billionaires to take sides. Geffen then colorfully described a bad case of Clinton fatigue to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.

Like New York Post columnist Dick Morris, Geffen saw the Clintons up close and bought the whole package, lending the ensuing disillusionment the pathos of a marriage gone bad.

Geffen said he knew no one ``more ambitious than Hillary Clinton,'' who is ``too incredibly polarizing'' to bring the country together. He also said no one believed that in the last six years, ``all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person,'' a fact that Republicans are lying in wait to use should Hillary become the nominee. And, by the way, he added, they both lie, and easily.

By contrast, Geffen finds new friend Obama ``inspirational'' and so do his pals, who gave the candidate $1.3 million on Tuesday night.

No Weak Sister

Geffen also put his finger on the Clinton trait that's causing her the biggest headache. Wanting to close down the line of inquiry on her early support for the Iraq war, she recently announced she would never say she had erred in her vote to authorize the invasion.

Like a child pretending not to care about an ice cream cone he isn't going to get, she told voters to go ahead and vote for someone else if they wanted to. ``If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,'' she said.

Like Democrats in general, Clinton needs to overcompensate in matters of national security to prove she would be as quick to use force as Republicans. And as the first serious female presidential contender, she needs to show she's no weak sister. Her refusal to say she's sorry is of a piece with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright use of the word ``cojones'' and Secretary Condoleezza Rice's choice in footwear.

Disposable Comments

Geffen's comments would be lining the kitty-litter box by now if the Clinton campaign hadn't decided to make a federal case out of them. Communications director Howard Wolfson went ballistic, putting out a statement accusing Obama of the politics of personal destruction, calling on him to return the dough and cut loose Geffen for ``viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.''

Obama, trying to show he won't be Swiftboated, shot back that he wasn't going to ``get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters,'' and then proceeded to do so. His communications aide pointed out that the Clintons had ``no problem with Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom.''

Not Just Money

If these two front-runners are going to go at each other over nothing, they may yet leave space for someone else to emerge.

To the extent the quarrel is over the million dollars that Clinton wants Obama to return, it's misguided. Consultants who get rich off campaigns push the idea that money is everything. Money actually matters less in a presidential race, where free media attention is enough to get a candidate known and where one who catches on can raise millions overnight.

Remember how many small candidates without a dime have had their moment. In 1992, Jerry Brown ran on a shoeshine and a scowl. An aide walked around after his speeches holding out a jacket for donations like an usher at Mass. He won the Democratic primary in Connecticut, the state that likes to call itself ``the land of steady habits.''

With all her money and all the consultants a candidate could buy, Clinton is trying to correct a problem opposite to the one she actually has. No one doubts Clinton is tough, which is what Geffen touched on when he called her obstinacy on Iraq ``typical.''

Hard Customer

By picking an unnecessary fight, Clinton reminded the public of what a hard customer she can be: her secret health- care task force that produced a 1,300-page proposal dead on arrival on Capitol Hill; her decision not to turn over Whitewater documents; the difficulty finding the Rose law firm billing records; her refusal to let her husband settle the Paula Jones lawsuit when he had the chance.

Blunders on the campaign trail rarely matter if they don't confirm some prior existing condition. Former Senator George Allen may well have gotten past ``macaca'' if he didn't have a history of nostalgia for the Confederacy. Senator John Kerry could have gone windsurfing with impunity if his beliefs didn't change with the breeze.

This is the time in politics, if polls are a guide, when the country has had its fill of The Decider, who confuses stubbornness with consistency and a closed mind with decisiveness. Voters know we live in a time when swagger doesn't cut it. What Clinton needs to prove is not the ``firmness'' and ``resolve'' her aides keep talking about but that she's human. She might start by admitting she made a mistake.

(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 22, 2007 00:06 EST