[wayoverontheright]

Certainly, drudging-up negative details about another person’s personal past can be perceived as bad form, no matter what the circumstances.

That's funny, I don't seem to remember anyone declaring it "bad form" on the part of the entire news media when George W. Bush had his DUI revealed before the election, nor when Dan Rather conspired with others to lie about Bush's military service.

Apparently,it's only bad form when the subject is a Republican, then it's "IMPORTANT FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO KNOW, AND DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES".

[Verginius Rufus]

The media timed the DUI story in 2000 for the Thursday before the election, the point when it would have the maximum impact, and helped keep it in the forefront of the news that weekend by claiming that Bush had failed to answer a reporter's question about it earlier honestly. It has been estimated that the DUI story may have cost Bush 4 million votes--up till then it looked like Gore was definitely going down the tubes. Of course in retrospect the Bush campaign maybe should have revealed the DUI early on.

There was a theory advanced here in late 2000 that the knowledge about the DUI came from one of the FBI files Hillary got her hands on, from background information gathered by the FBI on GHW Bush. The story was so old that anyone going to the courthouse in Maine looking for dirt on GWB wouldn't have found it unless they already knew about it--otherwise it would have come out in his Texas gubernatorial campaigns. I wouldn't put Hillary past feeding that story to the press--the only question is whether she wanted Gore to win the 2000 election.