Instantly one of my favorite Axelrod clips, partly because watching a senior advisor to the president field questions about dog-eating makes me proud to be an American and partly because his lame response tells you a lot about Team O’s approach to this campaign. There’s a serious, sensible answer available to him: “Why are we spending time on dogs instead of on hashing out policy differences?” But he can’t say that. If he does, he forfeits the Democrats’ right to make a stink about Romney’s dog later in the campaign, which he doesn’t want to do because they really believe they can win some votes by having their dumber surrogates push that attack line. So Ax retreats to the only position he can — it’s not that questions about dogs are fantastically stupid at a moment of $15 trillion debt and 8+ percent unemployment, it’s that questions about what Obama did as a child are fantastically stupid. Putting Seamus in the car-roof kennel as an adult is a serious matter worthy of national media discussion, but if Mitt had been a teenager when he’d done it — well, that would be a triviality not worthy of the country’s attention. (I think.)

Exit question: Why does Ax seem to think that Obama hasn’t made any dogs disappear as an adult? I can think of a few.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy