Black Flack

Given the flack over the comments of McCain aid Charlie Black regarding the benefit that McCain would get from another terror attack, the perspective offered by Jake Tapper of ABC is valuable.

...it's worth recalling that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, in August 2007, while campaigning in Concord, NH, similarly noted the political advantage a terrorist attack might give the Republican candidate.

Which Hillary then turned to her own advantage.

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord. "So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that."

Hillary took some heat for it, but she was politicizing terror, wasn't she?

Hillary was pilloried for the comments at the time, with then-rivals such as Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn, saying, "Frankly, I find it tasteless to discuss political implications when talking about a potential terrorist attack on the United States."

Just goes to show that these attempts by candidates to punish one another for saying things that are obvious and true and harmless are silly. I had hoped for more from the new kinda politics.