When John Edwards dropped out, and I had to hold my nose and choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I decided to go with Clinton. It didn’t feel like a difficult choice at the time. In a nutshell, I distrusted Obama more than I disliked Clinton. (A summary of why I distrust Obama can be found here, mostly in Matt’s words.)

I’m not so sure I still distrust Obama more than I dislike Clinton. My distrust of Obama has stayed constant, but in the last few weeks my dislike of Clinton has continued to increase. Dramatically. The latest straw on my back is Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad, and its downstream fallout. I’m not yet sure if my back was broken by this latest straw, but it’s hurting enough that I better make a doctor’s appointment and find out.

First, Hillary Clinton decided to resort to what can only be called Bush-Rovian fearmongering.

If you vote for Barack Obama, your children are going to die in their beds. This is the message of the latest Clinton television ad running in Texas. The spot starts with a moonlit shot of a blond toddler in the warm tangle of her sheets and then cuts to a close-up of an infant also in deep REM sleep. For the next 15 seconds, the images shift from one cherubic sleeping face to another. You’d think you were watching a Baby Ambien ad if the narrator weren’t giving you nightmares: “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing. Something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call. Whether it’s someone who already knows the world’s leaders, knows the military—someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.” At this point, we see our first adult, a concerned mother, opening the door and peering into her children’s bedroom. “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep,” the narrator repeats. “Who do you want answering the phone?”

The mother is indeed vigilant. It’s 3 in the morning, and she’s fully dressed in a business suit.

Then, Slate‘s John Dickerson invited the Clinton campaign in a conference call — as represented by the finest minds on the campaign team: Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein — to put their money where their mouth is, by asking: “What foreign policy moment would you point to in Hillary’s career where she’s been tested by crisis?” It’s what might be described as a very straightforward question. But the best minds on the Clinton campaign produced the most embarrassing collective whiff imaginable:

Regrettably, the usually loquacious Clinton team sat in stone silence for what seemed like quite a while (I think it was literally seven or eight seconds, which was quite a pregnant pause under the circumstances).

Eventually Mark Penn piped up.

“I think it was a moment of test when she was in China and she stood up and said women’s rights are human rights. That she showed the kind of wisdom that it takes to know when to push, basic elements under difficult circumstances.”

That’s not bad, and Clinton’s remarks in China were terrific, but a) this doesn’t really count as having been “tested by crisis”; and b) Mark Penn has spent the last few months insisting that giving a speech doesn’t really amount to real work.

After whiffing on the question, Clinton aide Lee Feinstein offered a response of his own.

“One of the interesting things is that Sen. Clinton has pretty broad support from the uniformed military, including the endorsement of 27 flag officers. That includes four at the rank of four-star. And this is really based on her work with these officers — a very diverse and esteemed group — through five years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she’s had a chance to work with them, some of them very, very closely, and a develop a relationship with them, where she’s earned their trust and respect.”

That, too, is accurate and impressive. But the question was about moments in which Clinton has been tested by crises, a claim from the campaign’s hard-hitting new ad. Endorsements from military officials are important, but they don’t necessarily answer the question.

This redefines political campaign incompetence. They made a ruddy ad, the centerpiece of which was the notion of Hillary Clinton being the crisis-tested candidate. And, between the ruddy lot of them, they don’t have one single instance of crisis-testing to point to? Pathetic is way too weak a word, I think.

I particularly liked the way Jennifer Skalka over at The Hotline phrased it:

You could’ve knit a sweater in the time it took the usually verbose team of Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson and Lee Feinstein, Clinton’s national security director, to find a cogent answer. And what they came up with was weak…

Now’s a good moment to remember Obama’s response to Clinton’s 3 a.m. ad. It starts with the exact same visual — the same house, the same children, sleeping in the same bed. Even the voice-over starts with almost the exact same words:

It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone ringing in the White House. Something’s happening in the world. When that call gets answered, shouldn’t the president be the one — the only one — who had judgment and courage to oppose the Iraq war from the start? Who understood the REAL threat to America was al-Qaeda, in Afghanistan, not Iraq? Who led the effort to secure loose nuclear weapons around the globe? In a dangerous world, it’s judgment that matters.

The Clinton campaign tried to make it about experience, about being crisis-tested. That blew up in their faces. They themselves can’t point out how Clinton is more crisis-tested than Obama.

Obama has made it about judgment. And he does have something clear and compelling to point to. Clearly, Obama wins this one. Handsomely.

And that’s been happening an awful lot lately. (I’m thinking of the last debate — the reject and denounce skirmish, for example.) Maybe it’s been causing a lot of folks who earlier supported Clinton to think that if Obama the candidate consistently beats Clinton the candidate — and on her own hand-picked talking points — perhaps Obama the president would also consistently beat Clinton the president? I don’t know if that’s a good way to pick a president, but I don’t know what’s a better way either. And maybe that’s what’s driving the poll numbers in Texas and Ohio, where Clinton has steadily (almost inevitably) lost ground to Obama in the last week?

At this point, one would have to say that if Clinton loses both Ohio and Texas, she will have only herself to blame. Or her own handpicked campaign team. Frankly, I now feel that if she somehow wins the nomination, it’ll be a bloody miracle. And I’m still nominally a Clinton supporter!