HARDBALL OR DIRT BALL?

It was as low a blow as has lately been landed in national politics.
And it had all the subtlety of a surprise kick to the groin.

Bill Shaheen, husband of ex-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, a
national co-chair of the Clinton campaign, volunteered to The
Washington Post his concern at what might happen to Barack Obama, were
he to be nominated.

"The Republicans are not going to give up without a fight, and one of
the things they're certainly going to jump on is drug use," said
Shaheen. And, as Obama has admitted in his autobiography to using
drugs, this will "open the door" to further probing.

"It'll be: 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone?
Did you sell them to anyone?' There are so many openings for
Republican dirty tricks. It's hard to overcome."

Well, it's sure going to be harder to overcome, now that Bill Shaheen
has suggested young Barack might have been a drug dealer on the South
Side of Chicago, and now that the press has been alerted as to
precisely what questions should be put to him - before Iowa.

Having planted this poisonous weed, Shaheen dutifully resigned. Then
Mark Penn, Hillary's top adviser, went on "Hardball" to assure us his
campaign would not stoop so low as to raise the issue. Said Penn, "I
think we have made clear that . . . the issue related to cocaine use
is not something that the campaign was in any way raising."

By introducing cocaine, Penn alerted the press that, if Obama did deal
drugs, we are not talking airplane glue or mushrooms. This little
episode validates Robert Novak's report a month ago, when, relying on
a Clinton source among other Democrats, Novak wrote: "Agents of Sen.
Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she
has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the
party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided
not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed."

Bill Shaheen, and perhaps others, decided that the situation has
become so dire for Hillary in the early caucus and primary states they
had to move the story, to stop Obama's surge after his Oprah moment.

And the Clinton campaign has reason to be nervous. According to Howard
Fineman of Newsweek, Obama has taken the lead in Iowa, New Hampshire,
Nevada, and South Carolina, the first four contests. Should Obama win
the four, he could electrify the party and swamp the Clinton machine
on Feb. 5.

Comes now the dilemma for Democrats. Should Obama lose Iowa to
Hillary, he will likely lose New Hampshire and the nomination, as
well. But Hillary's victory would be tarnished. For Obama's supporters
would see the Clintonites as having done him in by raising the specter
of drug-dealing and planting terror in the hearts of Democrats of a
dark Obama past being exposed after his nomination.

And this is exactly what Shaheen was implying might happen. But what
does Shaheen know that the press and the public do not? Has the
Clinton opposition research team dug into Obama's past and unearthed
there scandalous matters the nation does not know?

If it has, that would disqualify Obama for the vice presidential
nomination, as well - and his huge following, now tasting victory,
might take out their anger on the party that dissed him come November.

Yet, if Obama makes it to the nomination, Republicans, and the press,
will now raise the issue of whether Obama, who has admitted using
marijuana and perhaps cocaine, ever bought drugs for others or, more
critically, sold drugs. Nor is this a trivial matter. U.S. Appellate
Court Judge Douglas Ginsburg had to withdraw as Reagan's nominee to
the Supreme Court after admitting to having "experimented" with
marijuana and shared it with law students. What the Clintonites have
implied about Obama is far worse.

Obama is going to have to address this. And when he does, his
credibility will be on the line. For unless the Clintonites have put
out deliberate falsehoods, they know something we do not.

The question, "What is it?" will, if Barack is nominated, haunt
Democrats to Election Day. This is a dirty trick that appears to have
damaged both would-be beneficiary and intended victim.