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."