Kelly you are double dipping. The aerodynamic center or neutral point of a conventional symmetrical airfoil planform is aft of the CG, however it includes the lift of the wing already. Make a drawing of wing lift and tail lift about the CG. The lift of the wing is forward of the CG and to balance it the lift of the tail must be up. You have used the tail lift twice. You can say either "center of lift" or "wing and tail lift" but not "center of lift and tail lift".

When you include airfoil camber effects, flap effects and fuselage effects (all which seem to pitch the airplane nose down) then many times the tail loads shift to down. There is where the supercritical inverted airfoil is a valid use to keep the drag to a minimum.

In the case of the F-4 with flaps and slats, etc., there is a big nose down pitch. With the slatted tail it is keeping the horizontal effective enough at the low speeds to keep the nose up. As was noted by Ed (now known as Lucky Ed who I am very jealous of for him getting to fly lots of one of the meanest, good looking, airplanes of all time (while I flew a desk to and from the coffee pot, big thrill!)) during normal maneuvering tail effectiveness should not a problem. You put up with the drag of the horizontal slats at high speeds because you need them more somewhere else.

Paul, shame on you, don't talk bad about the F-4.

Ben