Charles Kaiser talks to Bill Kristol on his role in setting McCain's foreign policy

Sinner: The estimable Warren P. Strobel of McClatchy Newspapers, who has a fine record of questioning all of the Bush administration's lies on the way to the war in Iraq. But this time he seems to have been a bit sloppy. Strobel wrote that Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist Bill Kristol is part of "McCain's foreign-policy team." But Strobel didn't bother to confirm this with Kristol. When Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal asked Kristol about it, he flatly denied it. "Bill and I discussed this both before we gave him a contract and since, and he says he has no relationship with the McCain campaign, whether formal or informal," Rosenthal told FCP. That made Rosenthal happy, because joining a presidential campaign would be an ethics violation for any Times columnist—even this one. Then I called the great man myself:

FCP: Are you now or have you ever been an adviser to the McCain campaign?
Kristol: No. I don't think I'm listed as such. And I'm not an adviser to the campaign.

Does he call you up for advice, or do you call him up for news?
I quoted him in a New York Times piece two or three weeks ago. Of course I call him up. He doesn't call me up for advice much. Or I don't think he probably has in months. If he wants to talk about foreign policy, I'll talk to him. I've talked to John Kerry about foreign policy; I've talked to Joe Biden about foreign policy.

Bottom Line: Strobel told FCP, "I was told by folks in the campaign that he was among those who provide advice in the campaign. I never said he was a paid 'adviser.'"

Winner: The Onion on the only issue that really matters in the presidential campaign:

Sinner: Michael Crowley examines everything the Clinton attack machine has dredged up about Obama's record on Iraq. Crowley acknowledges his source and concludes that Obama is ... a politician who sometimes pays attention to his base. Note to Crowley: If Obama wasn't a great politician, he wouldn't be the first freshman black senator to lead the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Winner: Kate Michelman's riposte to Chris Matthews on Salon. After being pilloried by Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball, Michelman explained with eloquence and wit why her endorsement of Obama is a victory—not a defeat—for feminism.

Sinners: New York Times news editors, for two more bizarrely edited Obama takedowns. The first one was given 1,751 words on the front page to report that the candidates' friends say he got high less often than he implied in his own autobiography. (This was the second failed Times attempt in four months to try to find more drugs than Obama has already copped to using. The first one used 2,700 words to expound on the shocking discovery that Obama "exercised his writer's prerogative to decide what to include or leave out.")

The second strange Obama Times story this week was about Obama and race, and it reached these startling conclusions: "Glimpses inside the Obama campaign show, though, that while the senator had hoped his colorblind style of politics would lift the country above historic racial tensions, from Day 1 his bid for the presidency has been pulled into the thick of them. While his speeches focus on unifying voters, his campaign has learned the hard way that courting a divided electorate requires reaching out group by group. Instead of following a plotted course, Mr. Obama's campaign has zigged and zagged, reacting to outside forces and internal differences between the predominantly white team of top advisers and the mostly black tier of aides."

To get some actual wisdom on this subject, FCP consulted one of the eminences grises the Times reporter might have interviewed: former Pulitzer board chairman Roger Wilkins, who is professor of history and American culture at George Mason University, a former columnist for the New York Times, a former editorial writer for the Washington Post, and a black supporter of Obama for president.

Wilkins' thoughts: "I think it's clear that Obama doesn't want to be viewed as simply an appendage of the civil rights movement ... He's not saying this is of no consequence to me; he's acknowledging the debt ... [But] in a way he is showing the country a new way to deal with these issues. He has put them in the context of an idealistic and forward-looking kind of politics that effectively calls on Americans to get serious about their nation's founding ideals, including we don't torture people, we don't get involved in wars of choice, we don't get wildly into debt as if the future doesn't count, and we don't ignore global warming because we think scientists are stupid. The racial issue gets subsumed in what he's doing—and that's a good thing. It's very sophisticated and it's very complex and sensitive; but right now he is pulling it off."

Winner: As usual, Jon Stewart had the pithiest summary of Obama's remarkable political skills: "If I've said this once, I've said this a million times: Did Nebraska and Maine ever not vote for the black guy?"

Winner: Gail Collins for her lovely farewell to Mitt Romney in the New York Times, calling him "a compulsive panderer with no central core" who spent $324,000 per delegate.

Winner: David M. Shribman for his shrewd and funny essay about the American political system in the Globe and Mail. Shribman takes the primary process to task for being illogical, confusing, and unrepresentative, comparing it unfavorably to a Quebecois beauty pageant.

Winner: Maureen Dowd for carefully parsing whether racism or misogyny will have more influence over the final outcome of this year's elections. "As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can't take Bill out of the equation," says Dowd. "Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements, and dependencies." Dowd also reprises Clinton's quote to New York magazine's John Heilemann that before Iowa taught her she had to show her soft side, "I really believed I had to prove in this race from the very beginning that a woman could be president and a woman could be commander in chief. I thought that was my primary mission." Which is exactly what Hillary's opponents fear the most: If she becomes our first woman, she'll try as hard as George Bush has to prove that she is as tough as a "real" man.

Winner: Adam Nagourney, who rediscovered Obama's momentum today in the wake of his Potomac primary rout, after the reporter had briefly misplaced it last week.

AUTOGRAPHGATE
Sinners: Congressmen and their staffers investigating Roger Clemens' alleged drug use. The New York Times reports: "Any members of the House oversight committee or their staff who asked Roger Clemens for an autograph during his tour of the Capitol over the past week might have violated a federal law against soliciting things of value from people with interests before the committee."

Reporters: Thomas Rogers and Richard Vanderford


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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com.