We haven't checked in on the presidential campaigns in a long while, but with only 21 more shopping days until the Iowa caucuses on January 3, the race is tightening and candidates see victory either almost in their grasp — or slipping, phantom-like, through their fingers. Which means they are more prone than ever to say and do intemperate and desperate things that require an apology.

Today let's look at the latest contretemps involving Hillary Clinton and her arch-rival for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama. To set the scene, Senator Clinton has, in recent weeks, seen her once seemingly insurmountable lead in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire dwindle — and with it, her presumed aura of inevitability as the nominee of her party. The chief beneficiary of her decline has been Senator Obama.

He's young! Fresh! Exciting! Dynamic!

Clean, even, if you believe Joe Biden.

Ah ... but is he ready to be President? Does he have what it takes to stand up to the mean old Republicans? These are the questions Hillary wants Democratic voters to ask themselves. And they are fair questions. But the Clinton campaign persists in bringing them up in really stupid ways. For instance:

Did you know that when Obama was in kindergarten he completed one of those "What I want to be when I grow up" assignments by writing "I want to be a president."

You might think, Aw, that's so cute!

Not Hillary. Her campaign actually cited Obama's kindergarten paper as evidence of ... well, actually I don't know what it proves other than 1) Hillary has more than one idiot on staff. 2) When your teacher says this will go down on your permanent record, she or he isn't kidding!

However, rooting through Obama's pre-school career for dirt isn't what Hillary apologized for. I only brought that up to place her campaign's next dunderhead move in context.

Bill Shaheen, "master New Hampshire political operative" and co-chairman of the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire opined to a reporter last week that nominating Obama might be a mistake because:

Sen. Barack Obama’s youthful drug use would be fodder for Republican attacks if he were the Democratic nominee.

Obama’s admitted teen drug taking would “open the door,” Shaheen predicted, to questions such as “Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?” This would be “hard to overcome,” in Shaheen’s view. (MSNBC.com)

He's actually not wrong. Should Obama be the Democratic nominee, the Republicans will throw everything they can at him. The fact that he has admitted to using various illegal mind-altering substances in his youth will probably come up. Because, as we all know, Republican are mean and ruthless and nasty and like nothing better than engaging in the dreaded politics of personal destruction.

In other words, they're just like the Clinton campaign.

Which suggests that if Obama can beat mean old Hillary's hate machine, he's got a fair shot at handling the Republican version. Just saying.

Anyway, that was Shaheen shooting the breeze on Wednesday. By Thursday, he had changed his tune. From the Clinton campaign website:

A Statement from Bill Shaeen
Shaheen announces decision to step down as Clinton campaign Co-Chair

"I would like to reiterate that I deeply regret my comments yesterday and say again that they were in no way authorized by Senator Clinton or the Clinton campaign ... I made a mistake and in light of what happened, I have made the personal decision that I will step down as the Co-Chair of the Hillary for President campaign.

Clinton herself also apologized to Obama:

Clinton officials said she was personally distressed by the incident and had sought out Obama on the tarmac at Washington's Reagan National Airport before they flew to Iowa for the debate. Though the senators' interactions have been frosty since the start of the campaign nearly a year ago, Clinton wanted, her aides said, to make it clear that she had not approved Shaheen's approach. (Washington Post).

Show of hands from anyone who believes Hillary was all broken up about this incident? Concord Monitor?

It is possible that the campaign didn't know what Shaheen intended to say and that Hillary Clinton and her senior advisers were rightly angry about it. But Shaheen's broader theme - that Obama is unelectable because the skeletons in his past haven't been thoroughly exposed - is one the Clinton camp has been peddling more artfully for days.

What followed was classic. The Clinton campaign distanced itself from Shaheen's remarks. Shaheen said his comments weren't authorized by the campaign and that he regretted making them. Twenty-four hours later, he resigned.

The whole arc of a political tempest - reminding voters of something scurrilous, introducing a lie (there is no evidence Obama ever sold drugs), using GOP rivals as an excuse, apologizing for the whole incident and leaving the campaign - was neatly wrapped up in a couple news cycles.

No? Joe Trippi?

“This (Shaheen episode) just makes them (the Clinton team) look even more political,” said Trippi. “They’re just digging themselves a deeper hole” into “the problem they’re trying to get out of.”

He added such attacks “are such a blunder” that they might help Obama. (MSNBC.com)

Ouch.  Random blog guy?

Anyone who thinks that Billy Shaheen's Obama slur was a blunder, rather than a calculated piece of the politics of personal destruction, should note that Mark Penn repeated it hours after Sen. Clinton apologized.

Penn got this right out of the Rove play book.

...

Non-racist Americans (most Americans) cannot help but feel that electing a young black guy as President will go a long way to revolutionizing America's image in the world and helping to end America's most enduring and deadly problem: racism.

That is why his opponents need to destroy him by attacking his story. If they can substitute, in the voters' minds, the image of struggling African-American who made it to the top with images of the hood, drug dealers, and hip-hoppers adorned with bling, they can derail his candidacy.

That is what Shaheen and Penn were trying to do. That is what the Republicans will try to do — although taking down Obama will be harder for them than taking down Hillary precisely because he is African-American. Hillary-baiting — sexist and vicious as it is — need not be as delicate an operation as going after a black guy.

Hillary is ridiculed for daring to suggest that misogyny drives much of the animus toward her. Obama won't even have to mention racism for voters to know why questions are raised about whether his admitted drug use as a kid suggests he might have been a dealer. (Did anyone ever suggest that Bill Clinton was a dealer because he copped to using marijuana? But he's white. White kids use drugs. Black kids sell them).

Harsh. And about par for the course. Few seem to be buying Clinton's apology or her attack dog's apology as sincere expressions of regret for a mistake. Rather, they are meaningless pro forma apologies devoid of true content. Like punching you in the face and then saying "Oops! Sorry about that!"

This episode is an example of the devaluation of the public apology, a theme we see over and over. Whether it is demanding an apology as a political tactic (I am shocked! Shocked!) ... or the ritual apology for transgressing some point of political correctness ... or the "I'm sorry I got caught" apology or, as here, the "apology for the sake of pretending I didn't mean to do what I just did to you — and will probably do again tomorrow"... many of the public apologies we read and hear merely wear the form of an apology, but are really something else.

Which is what fascinates me about the whole topic. Anyway, I'll let random blog guy — actually M.J. Rosenberg — have the last word on this episode, because I think he makes a good point:

What's disheartening about this episode is not that Obama tried drugs in high school and acknowledged it. Few are the 40-somethings in America who didn't experiment with drugs or have friends and family who did.

It's the implication by Shaheen that it's better to obscure the truth - as Bush did in 1999 or, perhaps, as Bill Clinton did in 1992, assuring us that he hadn't inhaled. Or the implication that voters are stupid enough to believe that Bush or Bill Clinton didn't do anything wrong. Or that Bush and Bill Clinton's clumsy dodging of the issue actually helped secure their elections.

Perhaps in the past the admission of drug use or marital infidelity or any of a dozen other human foibles would have killed political ambitions. But surely by now American voters are clearheaded enough to realize their leaders aren't perfect.

Drug use as a teenager is not a disqualifier for public office. Americans should be grateful for, not leery of, Obama's honesty.

Amen.