In what many in the GOP came to view as the 11th Commandment, Ronald Reagan famously said," Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." Hillary Clinton, it would now appear, is taking his advice to heart. Not content to merely lambast the supposed inexperience of Barack Obama, Clinton's scorched-earth campaign has lavished praise on John McCain as the embodiment of a commander-in-chief. Desperate to resurrect her once-fading candidacy, it is Hillary Clinton who has sadly emerged as the embodiment of Reagan's Law.
The cries of foul from Obama supporters notwithstanding, Clinton's "3 AM" ad in the run-up to the March 4th primaries was within the usual bounds of primary competition. (Whether, of course, Senator Clinton is any more qualified to pick up that proverbial phone is another matter.) Like Walter Mondale in 1984, the former frontrunner called into question her surging opponent's national security experience and credibility.
But in branding Republican nominee John McCain as the gold standard for 21st century wartime presidents, Hillary Clinton crossed the Rubicon. Her descent from lampooning Obama into party disloyalty came swiftly.
On March 1, Clinton first moved beyond her long-time staple that was ready "on day one" to be commander-in-chief:

"I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say. He's never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002."

Yesterday, Mrs. Clinton was even more aggressive in making her "threshold" argument. Defining commander-in-chief qualifications as a mythical combination of longevity in Washington and proximity to national security decisionmakers, Clinton contended that she alone could match McCain in clearing the bar. Apparently no longer "honored" to be competing with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton instead lauded Republican John McCain as a "distinguished man with a great history of service to our country." As the Chicago Tribune detailed:

"I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold," the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant's bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.
"I believe that I've done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you'll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy," she said.

A month ago, I took Senator Obama to task for making an electability argument that implied he and his supporters might not rally to Hillary Clinton should he lose the nomination. But Obama's was a minor sin of presentation, of omission.
In comparison, Hillary Clinton's is a venal sin of commission. Facing the abyss just days ago, Clinton, as conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer put it, dropped "the atomic bomb."
Among his many platitudes, Ronald Reagan often declared, "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." When it comes to the Democratic presidential nomination, that's one Reagan mantra Hillary Clinton is only too happy to ignore. In her ever more aggressive campaign against Barack Obama, Clinton, to borrow another Cold War analogy, is risking mutual assured destruction.
UPDATE: Gary Hart, once on the receiving end of similar attacks from Walter Mondale, weighs in on Hillary Clinton's tactics in "Breaking the Final Rule."