Now this is classy. Joe Lieberman went on Face the Nation to say, "our enemies will test the new president early. Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration." Apparently, Lieberman believes international terrorism works something like the first day of middle school, when a bully pushes you into a locker to find out whether you'll push back. Jonathan Martin doesn't think it was a mere slip of the tongue. "That is some statement," says Martin, "and one that I doubt Lieberman just hatched over coffee in the Green Room." Remember, too, that's it's been a bit less than a week since McCain's senior adviser Charlie Black was roundly denounced for saying a terrorist attack would be an unalloyed boon to the McCain campaign. But look, this is pretty clearly the strategy. If this election is about terror, McCain might win. If it's about the economy, he definitely loses. So if a few surrogates have to take their lumps for all but promising a deadly terrorist attack if Obama wins, so be it. Americans don't vote the right way unless they're scared.
