Note:  I've been invited to discuss this blog - about Eliot Spitzer's meltdown - on Fox Business at 6 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, March 12th ...

Conventional wisdom has already identified either New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s career ambitions – or, if the commentator is more of a humanist than a political commentator, Mrs. Spitzer and their three girls – as the real loser in Spitzer’s melt-down.

However, politically at least, they’re wrong.  Politically, the real loser isn’t Eliot, his political career – or his family.  The real loser is … Senator Hillary Clinton.

That loss is not because Governor Spitzer is one of Senator Clinton’s increasingly desperately-needed super-delegates.  And it’s not because someone in the media (if not in Senator Obama’s campaign) will almost certainly call on her to repudiate Governor Spitzer as a supporter, just as she recently demanded that Senator Obama repudiate the endorsement made by “Minister” Louis Farrakhan, but that’s not why she’s the real loser here, either.

The real reason why Senator Hillary Clinton is the real loser is simple: here, in tenth anniversary year of the Monica Lewinsky melt-down, the last thing Senator Clinton needs is for America to be reminded of the facts and details surrounding her husband Bill’s exploitative tryst with intern Monica Lewinsky.  Yet today’s fallen political unfaithful husband, Eliot Spitzer, will do nothing so much as he will remind America of that other unfaithful political husband … Bill Clinton. 

Senator Clinton will be seen by some as a precursor “victim” to today’s spouse-victim, Eliot’s wife – Silda Wall Spitzer.  However, the real memory-jog will be more along the lines of then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s misguided belief in a “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy” as the architect of her downfall, rather than a philandering husband who couldn’t keep it zipped.  That one blame-comment, made on the Today Show on January 27, 1998 showed her political blindness in the face of a fact she’d known for decades – that Bill Clinton was a serial philanderer.  She knew about Gennifer Flowers. She knew about Paula Jones.  No matter how much she would have liked to believe otherwise, her attempt to blame the Lewinsky story on political opponents instead of her husband of more than 20 years shows a serious gap in judgment – the kind of judgment she is offering as her justification for being named the Democratic Party’s candidate.

As an aside, I was frankly amazed that Clinton-for-President campaign spokesman Mark Penn made reference to Ken Starr, even in an effort to put down Senator Obama – it brought up what may be the most shameful and painful part of Senator Clinton’s life – and the last thing she needs is for people to start remembering what her tenure in the White House was really like. 

For more than a year now, Senator Clinton has painted herself as “co-President,” using cleverly-crafted PR-driven strategies to credit herself with all the stellar accomplishments of the Bill Clinton Presidency. These range from those that President Clinton really had a hand in, such as NAFTA, Welfare Reform and a Balanced Budget – to those the President and his First Lady had little to do with, such as the peace in Northern Ireland.  Strategically, the last thing Senator Clinton wants, however, is a careful refresher course in the Clinton Presidency – not the one marked by major political accomplishments, but the one marked by scandal: Whitewater, Travelgate, Vince Foster, Casa Grande, Ron Brown, Susan McDougall … and, Monica Lewinsky.

Yet that is exactly what Governor Eliot Spitzer’s now-public assignation with a high-priced prostitute will do. Spitzer’s downfall will remind Americans of that last high-level Democrat who misused his executive position to further his own “unconventional” sexual needs and desires. And, if Spitzer tries to make this out as a “personal problem” – which is what he called it in his initial press conference – the way that President Clinton tried to make Lewinsky and lying before a Grand Jury a “personal problem,” one that was “just about sex,” this will only sharpen the comparison and further damage Senator Clinton’s push to the presidency.

If nothing else, it will cause the press to raise questions that, by their very nature, will diminish ex-President Bill Clinton’s utility as Senator Clinton’s campaigner-in-Chief; instead of lauding his wife’s accomplishments and potential, he’ll be peppered with “ten-years-after” questions about his own scandal, and how that relates to Governor Spitzer’s scandal.

So, at least politically, the big loser from the Eliot Spitzer sex-tryst melt-down is … Senator Hillary Clinton and her presidential aspirations.  She may yet survive this, as she’s survived so many other things in her tumultuous 30-plus year marriage-slash-political career – those who count her out have lost more bets than they’ve won – but clearly the last thing she needed in the run-up to the final, and critical, primaries in Mississippi, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and a dozen or so other states, was a reminder of the problems she faced as First Lady, and what that might portend for her own Presidency.

Remember, you heard it here first!

Harry Truman famously said:

“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think its hell.”

Republicans can be excused, perhaps, for forgetting this subtle-but-important difference between telling the truth and going negative, but Democrats who cite Truman as their strongest post-war President and something of a cultural icon ought to know better – or remember better. 

This failure to discern the difference between “telling the truth” and “going negative” is coming into sharp focus in this campaign, since both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have publicly and repeatedly eschewed “negative” campaigning – an approach which is high-minded, but often impractical.  This is especially a problem right now for Senator Obama, who is up against – in Senator Clinton – a real Chicago street-fighter.  The Clintons have always been reputed to “take no prisoners,” and so far in this campaign is concerned, she has lived up (or lived down) to that reputation, as has her husband and chief surrogate, former President Bill Clinton.

It used to be that “truth” was a defense in political campaigns – “negative” campaigning (also called “dirty” campaigning) was limited to spreading lies and unfounded innuendo about your opponents.  This dichotomy changed in 1988, when Vice President George H.W. Bush’s campaign picked up on “an attack” made against former Governor Michael Dukakis by Tennessee Senator (and fellow Presidential Candidate) Al Gore during the primary season.  This “attack,” of course, while mishandled by Senator Gore, led to the Republicans’ perhaps decisively effective “Willie Horton” ads.  Willie Horton was a convicted Massachusetts murder who – after being let out on a “weekend furlough” by then-Governor Dukakis – went on a murder-and-rape rampage in Maryland. 

The ad was indisputably true; however, because Horton was black and his victims were white, the politically correct media jumped all over the Bush campaign for “negative attack ads” that “played the race card,” totally ignoring the fact that the charge was first made in a debate by Senator Al Gore.  Facts didn’t matter – this ad “proved” that Republicans were closet racists, and this view – not the facts of Dukakis’s perhaps faulty judgment in furloughing dangerous murderers – became a major media issue.  Bush was damned for his racism, and his campaign advisor, Lee Atwater was particularly tarred as a virulent racist of the first order.

As a sidebar (and in the spirit of full disclosure), I knew Lee Atwater and worked with him – while he was South Carolina state Republican Party chairman – on the 1976 Ford campaign.  While he was not afraid to play hardball, I am absolutely certain that he was no racist.  I know false these charges hurt him personally and deeply.

However, since “Willie Horton,” truth has no longer been a defense.  An ad or speech or statement that calls an opponent to account is called an “attack ad” or characterized as “going negative” – when in fact, it’s often just reporting the truth.  For instance, comparison ads (we’ve seen many of these in this election cycle) are deemed attack ads, even if they honestly compare two candidates’ relative positions.  Romney was justly famous for his comparison ads, and he was seen as going negative EVEN when the ads were objectively true.  Candidates have been pressured by an underlying “political correctness” movement – primarily based around scrutiny from a media that’s constantly looking for yet one more controversy – and it’s gotten to the point that some candidates recoil from any comparative ads or even comparative statements by their supporters. 

For instance, John McCain has spent a great deal of time distancing himself from his own supporters.  Some of this, such as his repudiation of a warm-up-act talk show host who introduced him in Cincinnati by railing against Senator Obama (and daring to use his middle name, which has in this election cycle become “off-limits”), may be justified. However, when Senator McCain publicly scolded a supporter who cracked a joke at Hillary Clinton’s expense at a recent pro-McCain town hall meeting (“if the phone rang at 3 a.m. and Cindy McCain answered it, at least she’d know where her husband was”) is probably taking this “kid-gloves” treatment too far.  Senator McCain – the only real warrior in the campaign – is actually coming across as too civilized to fight, which may hurt him as he tries to project himself as the best-qualified candidate to fight a war against terrorists.

All the candidates ought to remember what Harry Truman said, and what American politicians used to believe – “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think its hell.”  Truly negative campaigning is beneath the office of the President, and unworthy of real candidates for that office – but telling the truth about opponents and letting the voters make up their mind has always been as American as apple pie.  If it was good enough for “Honest Abe” and “Give ‘em Hell Harry,” it ought to be good enough for today’s Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates.