NP: American Dad

On the one hand, you can't count me as one of those somewhat perplexed that Senator Clinton is being excoriated for something she's said almost exactly the same way several months ago. And didn't Mike Huckabee make a poorly constructed assassination comment just a few weeks ago? Is everyone's Kennedy-sense just on higher alert this time?

On the other hand, I agree with those who say introducing political assassination into the storyline, even as an incidental topic, is a monumentally dumb thing to do. Which brings me to my real point here: Clinton's "apology".

When Barack Obama said something that some people could interpret in a way that was offensive -- the "bitter" remarks -- I believe he said outright that he chose his words poorly, and that he was sorry. That he made a mistake. Clinton, on the other hand, fell back on the vacuous, blame-the-interpreter "if anyone happened to interpret my words as offensive, I regret that" construction, when the leap of interpretation for what she said was much, much shorter. I didn't get the sense that she thought she had done something wrong. I don't know if this is a conscious campaign decision, or a subconscious need to appear strong at all times, but it's more than a little off-putting.

(Note: If I'm feeling up to it, I may muck with Frank Zappa's "Cocaine Decisions" and turn it into "Campaign Decisions," but I'm not very good with song parodies. Or regular songwriting, for that matter.)

Keith Olbermann was way over the top on this last night on Countdown, but in his "special comment," he enumerated all the mistakes Clinton has made and for which she has been forgiven, despite her typical tack of not owning up to them as mistakes. While Obama has had missteps, I don't think even the most cynical reading of his campaign would yield so many items, and his reaction to them has been, in my mind, diametrically opposed. Some of his appeal is almost certainly a sort of confident humility, which is a strong tonic to the needy aggressiveness of the Bush White House.