Readers may be getting whiplash trying to follow the advice the Times columnist is offering the McCain campaign. As Glenn Greenwald wrote, last week Kristol was telling Republicans to “take the gloves off” and really go after Barack Obama.

The campaign did and, according to the polling data, it flopped. So McCain showed up on Fox News yesterday and walloped the McCain campaign for...taking off the gloves.

Today is his Times column, Kristol announces the McCain campaign is a disaster and that the candidate should be running as a “cheerful” leader, which of course, is pretty much the opposite of what Kristol advised seven days ago.