First, let me say that I'm glad that no one was injured in this standoff at a Clinton campaign office.

A distraught man wearing what appeared to be a bomb walked into a Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign office Friday and demanded to speak to the candidate during a hostage drama that dragged on for nearly six hours before he peacefully surrendered.

Shortly after releasing the last of at least four hostages, Leeland Eisenberg walked out of the storefront office, put down a homemade bomb-like package and was immediately surrounded by SWAT team with guns drawn.

The suspect — clad in gray slacks, white dress shirt and a red tie — was put on the ground, handcuffed and taken two blocks to the police office in the back of a tactical response vehicle.

The man walked into the office shortly before 1 p.m. and took several hostages, police and witnesses said. He let a woman with an infant go immediately and at least one other woman got out about two hours later.

Seconds before he surrendered, shortly after 6 p.m., the last hostage walked from the office. The hostage then ran down the street toward the police roadblocks surrounding Clinton's office.

I'd like to point out that this situation does not, in and of itself, reflect at all upon the character or qualifications of the candidate. After all, she was nowhere near where it took place, and had absolutely no role in resolving it. The one thing that she does appear to have done, contacting the families of the hostage, strikes me as the minimum that could be expected under the circumstances. Common decency demanded it, and for all that I oppose Hillary Clinton's election to any office i do believe that she does have, at the very core of her being, some level of human decency.

But the use of this incident by her campaign spokesman is positively absurd, as noted by Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters.

Somehow, later that evening, the Clinton campaign decided this makes Hillary look presidential, at least to Larry Sabato and the AP:

And as soon as it ended, Clinton took full advantage of the opportunity she had unexpectedly been handed.

In her New Hampshire press conference, she stood before a column of police in green and tan uniforms. She talked of meeting with hostages. She mentioned that she spoke to the stateÂ’s governor about eight minutes after the incident began.

The scene was one of a woman in charge.

“It looked and sounded presidential,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “This was an instance of the White House experience of this campaign. They knew how to handle this.”

That the crisis was outside Clinton's control gave it a rare quality in this era of hyper-controlled politicking, Sabato added.

“What’s most important about it is that it’s not contrived. It’s a real event and that distinguishes it from 99 percent of what happens in the campaign season.”

Er, what? Sabato, who usually gives intelligent political analysis, must have inhaled a little deeply. Clinton was nowhere near New Hampshire during the entirety of the crisis. What was presidential about having the Rochester PD talk a hostage-taker out of a building? What "leadership" did Hillary show in Virginia during this crisis? She canceled a speech!

I'd have to argue that such spin by Sabato is a sign of just how shameless the Clinton campaign can be at moments. After all, the only thing the Senator did was let the process work itself out -- and avoid the bad press of giving a campaign speech during the crisis.

Or did she? Morrissey also notes that AP's Glenn Johnson was reporting on Hillary's repeated calls to various law enforcement officials to get minute-by-minute updates on the situation. In other words, the various law enforcement folks involved hat to spend their time holding the hand of a frantic candidate rather than devoting attention to the key issue at hand -- how to resolve the crisis. In other words, she was in the way. What does that say for her crisis management skills as President? Nothing good, that's for sure.

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