Mr. Obama wanted to be president in Kindergarten!  So? I would venture a guess that between kindergarten and 1^st Grade half of my class mindlessly said the same thing. They also said they wanted to be any number of high-minded endeavors: doctors, lawyers, police officer, priests. That’s not the story.

All the campaigns comment on the kindergarten gambit.  Media reporters and analysts engage the “actual sentence”; hold up the “actual memo” for all as proof. That’s not the story.

The absent story is; someone had actually gotten hold of the sources for “the sentence” from “the memo”! 

Claiming no actual experience with campaigns, other than castigating the image on my television when someone insists on stupidity, I expected that there would be a discussion about what is actually involved in the commitment to chase a person’s history back to kindergarten.  The rhetorical question follows, why do you that?

The story should have been about the, apparent, depth to which opposition research must, in reality, exist. We’re I to run for office and my opponent had actual quotes of my elementary school utterances I would be both impressed and scared to death. I would be wondering “what the Hell else have they got” and where did the get it. 

The story should have been about political opposition research.  The story should have been about what, in this case, Mrs. Clinton is trying to accomplish when she or a senior advisor makes the decision to spend the time, effort and money necessary to chase an opponent’s life back to kindergarten.  In the interest of fairness, I don’t assume Mrs. Clinton is an exception to the rule.  Mrs. Clinton is likely better at it than the rest, but far from alone.  

Could it be that opposition research is the political version of Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD.?  The political version of MAD’s fundamental premise would be the same as it was with Cold War Russia.  “If you drop a bomb on me I will drop three on you” and I will do it quickly.  However, in reality, if you really want to scare the Russians you must demonstrate you have the goods.  No goods, no fear!  Nuclear Strategy accomplished this, to a degree, with nuclear testing. 

I cannot help but wonder if the political version of MAD works the same way.  Mrs. Clinton knew that “the sentence” was not going to send anything seriously off track. Mrs. Clinton accurately assumed that the media would not “go deep.”  Hence, a relatively low cost “nuclear test” to deliver that “What the hell else have they got” moment that Mr. Obama, no doubt, experienced.