I knew it was bad news for the Obama campaign when I called my dad this morning to thank him for some holiday gifts, and he interrupted me to say "Hey, did you hear what Obama's chief strategist said about Hillary Clinton? He said she was responsible for Benazir Bhutto's death! I really didn't like that!" Of course it is true, as David Axelrod suggested to NPR, that Bush's Iraq war, which Clinton supported, has done nothing to help the United States in its dealings with Middle Eastern nations. But using a political assassination in a turbulent country crucial to U.S. interests as a way to swipe at your primary opponent? That doesn't signal mature statesmanship. Clinton, on the other hand, did an excellent job of rising above the fray in an interview with Wolf Blitzer today, in which she called for an international investigation into Bhutto's death (as has John Edwards), and for President Bush to deploy a special envoy to encourage Musharraf to move forward with elections and democratization, preferably "a retired military leader who could relate to President Musharraf on a one-to-one basis and could shuttle back and forth between President Musharraf and President Karzai because there were a lot of tensions." --Dana Goldstein
