Taking a Page from the Bush-Cheney Playbook?

A recent appearance by Hillary Clinton at an Iowa forum last week saw her fielding at least one question planted in the audience by her campaign staff beforehand, The Associated Press reports.

An aide to the New York senator asked an audience member, a student at Grinnell College, to pitch a question to the Democratic presidential front-runner about global warming, the AP article said.

The college's student newspaper broke the story, after interviewing the student.

Various permutations of such a stunt have repeatedly been attributed to the Bush-Cheney administration.

Examples include:

• Pre-arranged questions at a October 2005 videoconference between the president and troops in Iraq (commented on here and here);

• The planting of James Guckert/Jeff Gannon at White House press conferences and briefings;

• Secret payments to Armstrong Williams and other opinion writers;

• A series of allegedly staged and scripted "Town Hall" meetings on Social Security (mentioned here, here, here and here);

• A fake October press conference rigged by FEMA officials and staffers, as perhaps the most recent episode (AP story here).

The 2000 and 2004 elections, meanwhile, featured allegations of carefully screened and orchestrated "public" events. While some were arranged by the campaign, an official 2004 Fourth of July visit to West Virginia's Capitol sparked a recently settled lawsuit (background also here).

The lawsuit, in turn, helped yield a heavily redacted Presidential Advance Manual that details tactics deployed to ferret out and and deal with agitators real or perceived (That visit also included a softball interview with local media).

During her August visit to the Mountain State, Clinton held a Town Hall-style meeting, an hour-long event at West Virginia State University.

At least one question wasn't planted: the one about Iraq posed by Rev. Jim Lewis, shortly after Clinton ignored the prayer vigil he and West Virginia Patriots for Peace held outside her downtown Charleston fundraiser.

Lewis pressed her about withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq. Members of that audience also asked her about:

• Health care (that question came from an AARP member as part of its Divided We Fail campaign, which is appealing to all the presidential candidates);

• China (the trade imbalance, the buying of U.S. debt and the rash of tainted imported consumer products);

• The status of women in the U.S. (unequal pay);

• Illegal immigration (posed by a student on behalf of those who follow the naturalization process).

Phony baloney public events appear to be all the rage these days. Consider Sen. John McCain's observations of "carefully staged campaign events" by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger after he helped the California Republican promote November 2005 ballot initiatives.

And in Japan, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's administration was caught staging Town Hall meetings late last year.