Character Assassination?

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Which, of course, all but guarantees that such conversations will often be driven by minuscule and ephemeral matters.

The issue is still percolating, in columns by Gene Robinson ("while losing this race for the nomination, Hillary Clinton also loses her soul") and Bob Herbert ("If you give her every benefit of the doubt, you still have a candidate making a tasteless and purely self-serving comment that she should have understood would send a shiver of dread through millions.")

Mike Allen has a big scoop:

"Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush 'veered terribly off course,' was not 'open and forthright on Iraq,' and took a 'permanent campaign approach' to governing at the expense of candor and competence . . .

"McClellan charges that Bush relied on 'propaganda' to sell the war. He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war. He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be 'badly misguided.' . . .

"McClellan asserts that . . . Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, and I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, 'had at best misled' him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity."

Oh, and he says that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial."

And McClellan was one of President Bush's biggest loyalists!

Was this worthy of being the lead story--after an RNC attack--on "Hannity & Colmes," "Anderson Cooper 360" and other shows: Obama saying his uncle helped liberate Auschwitz, when his [great-]uncle helped liberate Buchenwald? The fact that he got the concentration camp wrong? Power Line says Obama must be "the most gaffe-prone politician in memory."

The latest Bill Clinton blast against the media has to do with the alleged suppression of polls showing Hillary as the stronger general-election candidate, as ABC reports:

"Clinton also strongly criticized the media, saying that ever since Iowa they have been against his wife, making him feel as though he was living in a 'fun house.' As he concluded his thoughts on how this election has been handled, he again went back to the media's choice of coverage.