Coming apart?

Is the Clinton campaign showing signs of panic? Today, the campaign issued a statement assailing Barack Obama for allegedly saying that he had not been planning to run for President for a long time. What Obama is quoted by the Clinton campaign as saying is that he is "not running to fulfill some long held plans"--a not-very-veiled reference to Hillary Clinton herself (does her campaign really want to remind people of her career path?).

And what does the campaign marshal as evidence? Among the items--I kid you not--is that he told his kindergarten teacher that he wanted to be President. In second grade, he is said to have written an essay in which he wrote "I want to be a president." (The Senator, prescient beyond his years, might have been referring to the presidency of the Harvard Law Review, which he achieved in 1990.)

Then there was the forum in Iowa at which Clinton was booed yesterday--in contrast to the enthusiastic reception given to Edwards, Obama, Dodd and Kucinich.

A far cry from the inevitability mantra that the Clinton campaign was peddling for months, now the New York Senator is failing to show the composure that would be expected of a front-runner or, indeed, a serious contender.