1115.org

Mr. Noble-and-Lofty was on The Tonight Show last night.

Appearing on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” Mr. Obama was asked – more than once – whether he was discouraged that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was leading in national and state polls.

“Hillary appears to be a shoo-in,” Mr. Leno said, adding: “How discouraging is that?”

“It’s not discouraging,” Mr. Obama replied.

“A little bit?” Mr. Leno asked.

“Hillary is not the first politician in Washington to declare mission accomplished a little too soon,” Mr. Obama said, the crowd laughing and applauding.

Silly me! I totally missed Hillary’s declaration, announcement, whatever.

Putting words in somebody’s mouth that they never said (in order to score political points), isn’t that the kind of sleazy politics Obama has been promising with great conviction we would never see from him?

Putting specific words in a specific person’s mouth that they never said — and your biggest political rival’s mouth, to boot — isn’t that worse than George Bush going “Some have said …”?

When you run the kind of campaign Obama has run, and then you do stuff that someone can fairly describe as worse than Bush (is there a bigger insult in politics today?), then who the hell are you?

One more thing you may as well ask yourself: was that probably snappy off-the-cuff repartee or was it probably a previously prepared zinger?