The consensus of the Inside Washington crew this week is that the New York Times story suggesting that John McCain perhaps, maybe, might have had an affair with a Washington lobbyist eight or nine years ago, and perhaps, maybe, might have used his position to help out her client(s) actually helped McCain.

Here is Rush Limbaugh, who has been trashing McCain for months: “The story is not the story. The story is that this paper endorsed John McCain, sat on this story and now puts it out just prior to McCain wrapping up the nomination.

The message here is that while conservatives do not like McCain, they like the New York Times even less.  Politico quotes Charlie Black, long-time GOP Washington operative: “Even if they want to quibble within our own tribe, they’ll circle the wagons when we’re attacked by the Times."

If that’s all there is to the story, McCain is OK. Better than OK, actually.  But, because of his categorical denials—a direct, “No,” to each question about romance and about influence peddling—he is vulnerable to the drip, drip, drip factor if hard information to the contrary surfaces in the blogosphere or in the mainstream news media.

Also, concerning the Obama-Clinton debate, the troops on Inside Washington agree that Clinton’s line about Obama’s borrowing of Massachusetts Deval Patrick’s language (“just words”) was a disaster: “Lifting whole passages from others’ speeches is not change you can believe in. It’s change you can Xerox.”

Was that Hillary Clinton’s own language or a line someone in the campaign wrote for her? 

And Michelle Obama’s comment?

“For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change." Charles Krauthammer says it was, “unpatriotic.”  Mark Shields indicates, rather, that it was simply politically unwise.