Raleigh, N.C. ? A day after undergoing the toughest grilling of the campaign, Sen. Barack Obama attempted to get back on the offensive Thursday, arguing that his candidacy offers a clear departure from the attack politics and trivial issues he said have dominated past presidential campaigns and led to gridlock in Washington.

“Washington hasn’t gotten the news yet that people want something different,” the senator from Illinois told an audience at a campaign rally in Raleigh. “Last night we set a new record. It took us 45 minutes … before we heard about health care. Forty-five minutes before we heard about Iraq. Forty-five minutes before we heard about jobs. That’s how Washington is.”

Obama and his team appeared taken aback by some of the negative reviews of his performance in the 90-minute debate in Philadelphia with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. In their estimation, he had more than held his own and delivered a stronger performance than in some early debates, when his low-key style sometimes appeared soft in contrast to Clinton’s bite.

Clinton, campaigning in Pennsylvania with her daughter, Chelsea, and her mother, Dorothy Rodham, tried to stay on a positive track after jumping in frequently throughout the debate Wednesday night to add her own criticisms of Obama after he had been questioned sharply by moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.

But in a conference call with reporters, top Clinton advisers encouraged re-porters to continue to pursue some of the issues and questionable associations raised during the Wednesday face-off – the 21st Democratic debate of the long nomination battle.

The debate moderators drew criticism from Obama allies and others after they devoted the first half of the debate to quizzing Obama about his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, and William Ayers, a member of the radical Weather Underground of the Vietnam era and longtime resident of the Chicago neighborhood where Obama lives.