It has occurred to me that Hillary Clinton and Eliot Spitzer share a certain quality that I haven't heard expressed. Both of them positioned themselves as fighters. What led Spitzer to his downfall, could be leading Clinton to a similar fate.

Since the Eliot Spitzer scandal broke, almost all commentary about his career has included anecdotes about how he was elected to fight Wall street, corruption and white collar crime. We also heard how his brash take-no-prisoners style left him with few friends and many many enemies. Nobody came to his defense when he needed someone to stick up for him at a time of crisis partly because he burned so many bridges.

Hillary Clinton seems to be following a parallel track with her campaign against Barack Obama.

Today, I have been noticing new promo spots on MSNBC featuring some of their notable anchors. Brian Williams, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews have all made short segments promoting their network's political coverage by invoking civics, democracy, and what makes this country great.

I glazed over them without paying much attention but something struck me about the last thing Matthews said in his segment:

"Optimism is America"

On February 9th, I stood up at my caucus and made my case for Barack Obama. One of the things I said was that it's about time we had a president with the honesty and integrity the office demands.

Since it was a caucus, we got a chance to try to convert voters to our side. I mentioned to some supporters of Hillary Clinton that Mark Penn was her chief strategist but none of them had heard of him. I compared him to Karl Rove. I mentioned that his firm did PR work for Blackwater and that raised eyebrows but I didn't make a good enough argument to cause them to switch to Obama. Many of them were voting for her because she was a woman.

Hillary Clinton's actions this week have provided a much clearer sign that honesty and integrity don't figure into her calculation about what it takes to be the leader of this great country.

Yesterday, I flipped on CNN to find Hillary Clinton ranting and raving about some direct mail pieces that Obama had sent to Ohio voters and I was stunned at what I saw. I watched it again and again to make sure I got everything she implied.

Was it an unscripted spontaneous eruption of anger by an exhausted candidate or was it a planned tactic in order to draw free media attention in preparation for the next debate?