Hadn't thought of this

A column out today by Ruben Navarrette Jr. proposes an interesting idea.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/17/navarrette/index.html

He suggests that the Clinton-Obama fight is getting dirty. I didn't think so until I read his column. For example there were stories recently about how Hillary Clinton had fired staffers and volunteers who had put out misleading information about Barack Obama.

My naive reaction was something like, "Wow, Hillary's playing it smart. She's doing battle with Obama, but being careful to make sure that it doesn't get dirty. She knows she doesn't want to look like the bad guy in a fight against Obama. So, she's firing anyone who lets it go in that direction."

But Navarrette suggests that Hillary easily had it within her power to have prevented these statements in the first place. He insinuates that these questions about Obama's drug use - including a question about whether he was a pusher too - were raised deliberately.

If we take Navarrette's idea to the next step, we might suggest that Hillary could have arranged all of this from the beginning. She may have asked these volunteers and staffers to do these things just so she could step forward and publically punish those involved and seemingly quash these erroneous ideas, ideas that still get aired in the public domain.

That way, she could look like the good guy and still plants the seeds of doubt about Obama.

Now that's what I call sneaky, if it's true.