Looking into the Kristol Ball

(Editor's note: For an update on Kristol's relationship with the McCain campaign, see update below.)

Bill Kristol is a widely sought commentator --- he's the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, a regular analyst on the Fox News channel, and, as I'm writing this, I'm also watching him during an appearance on the Daily Show. In the times I've interviewed him over the years, he's been unfailingly genial and patient.

Yet The New York Times sparked an intense but relatively brief outrage over the New Year when it appointed him to be a weekly columnist for a year. Much of the annoyance was ideological, and on the left -- in no small part because Kristol is so firmly linked to the justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I just heard him say Iraq would be judged as having turned out "better than Vietnam, better than Korea." Stewart seemed disbelieving. (Additionally, some at the Times have not forgotten Kristol suggested the government consider prosecuting the paper in 2006 for disclosures of how it tries to track terrorist finances.)

After a first few creaky columns, Kristol seems to be hitting a stronger stride and inspiring fewer complaints. Monday morning he wrote yet another column about the presidential races: "So around 9 p.m. Tuesday night, television networks probably will be announcing, for the first time, that Barack Obama holds an unambiguous delegate lead."

And Kristol seems to be more or less right about that -- depending on how you define the word unambiguous. (Those pesky Democratic "Super-delegates" who are not picked by voters but by their status within the parties aren't prevented from shifting their loyalties with changes in the prevailing political winds.)

In his brief tenure as a weekly Times columnist, Kristol's written a lot about other candidates too, including Republican candidates Mike Huckabee and John McCain. But he hasn't seen fit, at least not that I've seen, to mention in his column that he's been a member of McCain's kitchen cabinet of advisers about national security issues.

Kristol is absolutely not keeping this a secret ---- it's been reported previously, say, in this chart in the Washington Post last fall, or this article in McCain's hometown Arizona Republic back in the summer of 2006.

And Kristol's informal role for McCain was cited as recently as this past weekend in an article published by Warren P. Stobel of the McClatchy newspapers. But even if Kristol has set aside his allegiances for his new year-long stint at the Times, why not disclose those ties?

Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations is a contributing editor to the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times. In his most recent column, which was about McCain, Boot acknowledged in an aside his "admittedly biased" take -- and added a disclosure at the end of his column that he too was an unpaid adviser to McCain on foreign policy.

Was that so hard?

But that question of disclosure is less for Kristol, who has toggled between the worlds of policy, politics and punditry for years, than for the Times, which presumably thought it was introducing a voice to at least some of its readers who had not caught him in the pages of the Weekly Standard or on the Fox News. (I did put in a call to Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, but it may have come too late for him to respond Tuesday evening.)

The Times has rules about political activities For example, here's paragraph 89 of its Ethics policy, which appears to apply to editorial as well as news employees.

"Journalists do not take part in politics. While staff members are entitled to vote and to register in party primaries, they must do nothing that might raise questions about their professional neutrality or that of our news operations. In particular, they may not campaign for, demonstrate for, or endorse candidates, ballot causes or efforts to enact legislation. They may not wear campaign buttons or themselves display any other insignia of partisan politics."

The key phrase there might be "staff member" -- Kristol is on contract --- so he's not one. But when people read columns by Kristol on the presidential race -- even laudatory ones like this one on McCain -- they might like to know he's already publicly cast his lot.

So far, if they're relying on his columns in the Times, readers wouldn't know.

-- David Folkenflik

Update: Just saw following piece in Full Court Press in Radar. Kristol says he has no official involvement in the McCain campaign, and Rosenthal says he asked his new columnist about that very issue before bringing him on board. "If he [McCain] 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."

-- D.F.

More: See interview with Kristol.

-- D.F.

2:27 PM ET | 02-13-2008 | permalink