After slamming Barack Obama’s campaign for his aggressive efforts to get thousands of out-of-state college students at Iowa colleges to support him in the state’s caucuses, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s team has mounted a similar drive aimed at the same group.

Of course there is nothing illegal about participation in the caucuses by non-Iowa residents attending college in the state. Obama and Clinton’s pushy bid to get these students to support them at these gatherings is not the same as schemes for busing backers across state lines to take part in campaign events.

On the other hand, in congenial, personal Iowa, with its often neighborhood caucuses, this pressuring of out-of-state students does have a shabby and manipulative feel about it.