Last week Hillary Clinton provoked howls of protest from her Democratic rivals when she suggested that she would be the best candidate to blunt any Republican response to a terrorist attack prior to the 2008 election.

Another incident would "automatically give the Republicans an advantage again no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," she said. "I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that." Mrs Clinton's rivals understandably chose only to respond to her self-serving conclusion, albeit with cinematic outrage ("Why, you low-down, scheming, good-for-nothing . . . " or words to that effect). But her premise was hard to dispute.