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Ferdinand Bol, Fabritius and Pyrrhus (1656). Read more about Pyrrhus of Epirus.

On the eve of this crucial primary, [Senator Hillary Rodham] Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad ? torn right from Karl Rove?s playbook ? evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. ?If you can?t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,? the narrator intoned.

If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton?s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: ?We would be able to totally obliterate them.? . . .

Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton?s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about ?bitter? voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.