Passportgate

In politics, it's important to be good. But it really helps to be lucky.

Barack Obama, still on the defensive over the rantings of Jeremiah Wright, caught a break last night -- one that involves almost staggering stupidity by some administration officials.

At 8 p.m., MSNBC broke the story of how State Department contractors had breached security to poke around in Obama's passport file.

Had they forgotten what a black eye it was for the first Bush administration when officials were sniffing around Bill Clinton's passport file during the 1992 campaign? What exactly did they hope to find in the Obama documents? Did higher-ups know?

And once it was discovered, how on earth could the administration wait more than two months to notify Obama?

It's not that millions of people are going to vote for the senator because of Bushian snooping. But the revelation changes the subject, casts him as a victim of possible dirty tricks and gets the spotlight, at least temporarily, off his incendiary pastor.

Now the investigations begin.

"Three State Department contract employees improperly accessed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's private passport files, the State Department confirmed on Thursday," the Chicago Tribune says.

"Department spokesman Sean McCormack said two contract employees were fired and one disciplined for accessing the files on three separate occasions this year . . .

"In a hastily scheduled conference call with reporters Thursday night after news of the security breach broke, McCormack declined to identify the employees involved but said the improper access was uncovered through internal department controls. 'This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years,' Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail to reporters."

The Obama campaign plays a little defense on the pastor front, passing on a photo of a 1998 White House prayer breakfast just before the Starr Report was released:

"Among those in attendance, was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who is seen shaking hands with Mr. Clinton in a photograph provided yesterday by the Obama campaign . . .