One of the guys?

The Pennsylvania voting results were a bit amazing.

We regularly hear politicians and Mothers Against Drunk Driving rail against underage drinking. It’s unsafe, they say. It kills kids, they wail. It is a poor example tailgate partying adults provide their offspring, getting drunk to have a good time.

And then those same mothers give the go-ahead to a would-be national role model who downs boilermakers in an Indiana tavern on national TV, for no other purpose than to show she’s one of the guys.

“Every time I get around you we always start drinking!” CBS News’ Fernando Suarez quoted Hammond, Ind., Mayor Tom Hammond.

“That’s true,” Clinton said. “It is Saturday night, though.”

That’s an excuse?

But whether the event was staged (which is likely) or real (which it also could have been), the question is, or should be, raised: Is reducing the legal drinking age simply a politically advantageous way to get 18-t0-21-year-olds or their parents to pay a couple of bucks to the tavern for a beer, and a couple hundred in “voluntary tax” to the local municipality?