I try to stay away from too much commentary on the Democratic primary (on which I am obviously Completely Neutral and Impartial) but this was too ridiculous to pass up. (Boilerplate: I don't speak for any campaign or for the Harvard Dems, which has no official position on the primary. I am a private citizen of questionable judgment sitting alone at a computer. There is no semblance of authority associated with what I say - only lots of links.)

Typically Barack Obama's stump speech (and believe me, I've heard it plenty) includes a line to the effect of "I haven't been planning to run for President my whole life." The gist of it, in the context of the speech as I understand it, is that he's subtly accusing some politicians of pursuing power, in part, for the sake of having power; he's differentiating himself from those elected officials whose every move is calculated to win over some constituency of Nascar dads or soccer moms or old folks in Iowa. (Second boilerplate: I am not accusing any candidate of doing this, at least not here.)

Yesterday Hillary Clinton's campaign picked up on this, issuing a press release attacking Obama's character by digging up quotes about Obama's political ambitions. They cite his brother-in-law, a law school classmate, and some news stories all saying that Obama had presidential ambitions within the last decade.

This in itself, I think, is a little bit specious - the actual quotes ("It was clear to me from the day I met him that he was thinking about politics," from a law school classmate; "The final act of the plan was turning up the talk about a potential Presidential bid, which was greatly aided by his positive press and suggestions by pundits that he run for President," from the AP on Obama's time in the Senate) don't particularly convey a longstanding conspiracy. Nor, more importantly, do they debunk what I consider to be the actual meaning of Obama's claim about not having planned to run for a long time; they don't demonstrate conclusively that his work in the Senate has been calculated to support a presidential bid.

But here's what's really ridiculous: they pull out work he did in elementary school in Indonesia.

His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said."

[...]

"Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said."

Wait. They really went back to his elementary school essays to pin ambition on him? Not only is this inspecific (is it third grade, or kindergarten, or what?), it's also pretty damn stupid. If the Clinton campaign went around accusing every kid in the United States who wanted to be the President in kindergarten of being overly ambitious and calculating, they would be issuing press releases until the polar ice caps finally finished melting and Al Gore returned from the political dead to save the righteous. Come on, Hillary. I know you're probably antsy to start attacking all of these other candidates who have been piling on you, but you can't hold a man's third-grade essays against him.

To borrow from Think on These Things, "Clinton accusing Barack Obama of having a character issue? Oooo. No she di’in’t!"