The Pennsylvania primary is over and done with, and I for one am thrilled with how utterly inconclusive it was. In the previous 44 contests, the Democratic candidates were too focused on wooing voters via tactics like discussing how best to implement nationwide health care or proposing solutions to America’s mortgage crisis that don’t involve not doing anything. Nice try, Dems, but you know who else didn’t have health insurance or homes? Hobos. Yet they weathered the Great Depression just fine and became beloved comedic stereotypes in the process, despite all the efforts of FDR and railroad bulls.

Thankfully, Hillary Clinton has shown real leadership in the last few weeks by moving discourse away from the issues and toward the things that really matter, like the flaws of her opponent, Barack Obama. As a former First Lady, Hillary knows there’s more to being President than tirelessly working to improve the lives of millions. It doesn’t matter how many conflicts you mediate or by how much you increase the GDP, if you once served on the board of an anti-poverty group with a former member of a radical organization from the 1960s, then all bets are off. If that’s the kind of company Obama keeps, how do we know that if elected he won’t appoint Tommy Chong to the Supreme Court or put Wavy Gravy in charge of the Department of the Interior? Forget balancing the budget when Secretary Gravy is spending millions in taxpayer dollars on LSD-fueled, Lewis and Clark style expeditions… to the center of the mind, man.

And, if you’ll indulge a little more ’60s-style paranoia, is there any way to determine for sure that Barack Hussein Obama isn’t a Manchurian Candidate, sent here by one of the many extremist Muslim groups that hate our freedoms? I don’t think there is. After all, even Hillary said he’s only a Christian—as far as she knows—and she’s not one who refrains from sharing what she knows. Unless, of course, it’s something non-germane to running for President, like her White House phone logs.

This is why Hillary’s decision to sling smear Obama is so important. How else would we know about these all these little, yet important, things? We can’t rely on the media alone. With the backlash ABC received after the most recent debate, it’s very unlikely Obama will be getting any questions about why he doesn’t wear a flag pin anymore at next week’s face-off in North Carolina.

Now, some will say that this is all an act of desperation on Hillary’s part, and an unsuccessful one at that, seeing as her decision to campaign negatively corresponds to a precipitous drop in her expected margin of victory in the Pennsylvania primary. To those people I say, So? Smear tactics have been a part of American politics since angry Bostonians smeared hot tar all over the British harbormaster that tried to break up their Tea Party, an event graphically depicted in the HBO mini-series John Adams (Graphically depicted = full frontal male nudity. Got to get those Sex in the City viewers back somehow). All Hillary is doing is embracing tradition. Having a Presidential campaign without mudslinging, as Obama would have it, would be as un-American as not electing a rich white guy. Thankfully, if Hillary’s tactics pan out, that’s another tradition we’ll keep alive in 2008.