There have now been three “mistakes” in the campaign according to analysts that it turned out probably helped to one extent or another those who made them: 1) Huckabee’s ad press conference; 2) Hillary’s tearing up; 3) Mitt’s attack on McCain for saying Michigan jobs aren’t going to come back. The last wasn’t as high profile as the others, and commentary on it was mostly limited to conservative wonky types. But it was thought that Romney had stepped in it by hitting McCain for making a perfectly reasonable point (I thought so myself). Politically, though, Romney’s tack worked. It put McCain on the defensive, and he backed off a bit from his “straight talk” at the end. What united all these “gaffes” is that — whatever their inartfulness or substantive weakness — they made helpful statements about the candidates and their priorities: that Huck was a really good guy who just couldn’t bear to go negative; that Hillary had a human side after all; that Romney is an optimist who wants to fight as hard as possible for Michigan’s jobs.