Wilson has been campaigning for Hillary Clinton. But even the local Obama supporters, such as Democratic Society vice-president Cameron Texter, were happy to have a national figure such as Wilson speak at their gathering.

I arrived at the Holiday Inn in West Manchester Township as the 160 guests were finishing their desserts. It was cheesecake, which struck me as odd. I'd think it would be insensitive to have Wilson over for dinner, and serve any kind of yellow cake. Ba-DUM-bump! I'll be here all week, folks! Tip your bartenders, tip your waitresses, good night and God bless!

Anyway, I was wondering if Wilson would be hostile to the press, based on his wife's outing. But he seemed pretty affable. He didn't really have time to talk when I got there, but he invited me to tag along as he worked the room, shaking hands and introducing himself.

Later, one of Clinton's staffers asked if I wanted to interview him, but he ended up answering every question I wanted to ask in the course of his talk to the gathering.

The Obama faction didn't fare as well, speaker-wise. Initially, their speaker was supposed to be Pat Casey, the brother of U.S. senator and Obama supporter Bob Casey. When I got there Thursday night, the dinner organizers told me he couldn't make it, and the speaker would be Bob Casey's sister, Margi McGrath.

She ended up getting stuck in traffic, and couldn't make it either. So the speaker was local Obama campaign organizer Jeff Ingram.

Ingram ended up talking mostly about how Obama had inspired him personally, leading him to his current position. No, it's not going to make anyone forget "I Have a Dream." But I give the guy major points for stepping up. Just speaking in front of an auditorium like that would scare a lot of people. It couldn't have been easy doing it not only on such short notice, but immediately after an internationally known figure like Wilson.

Not surprisingly, Wilson didn't speak kindly of the Bush administration. His gripes with them are well documented, and I won't bother repeating them here.

He mentioned the First Amendment's granting of the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and characterized keeping the government accountable as an act of good citizenship.

He also touted Clinton as the more experienced Democratic candidate.

What I found most interesting was a point he had made the previous Sunday in an opinion piece published in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and which he reiterated from the podium on Thursday. It concerns Clinton's 2002 Senate vote to authorize the war in Iraq.

Wilson said that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senators at the time that the purpose of the authorization wasn't to start a war, so much as to give the United Nations leverage to make Saddam let the weapons inspectors do their job.

If that's the case, I wonder why Clinton hasn't been making that point all along. The Obama campaign has certainly made an issue of that war authorization vote.

I suppose there is no easy way to explain an apparent reverse in policy. National campaigning doesn't lend itself to nuanced explanations. Just look at the way that John Kerry's "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" comment came back to bite him.

If I can give that particular dead horse a few more whacks, the flap over that comment irritated me. Yes, Kerry did choose a particularly regrettable way to phrase that. But the underlying point was reasonable. He voted for and against different versions of the bill -- essentially different pieces of legislation.

I'm not just criticizing the Bush administration here, because they all do it. Today, my e-mail in-box had a whole bunch of messages from Clinton campaigners to the effect that they're appalled, appalled, by Obama's "guns and religion" remarks.

I just hope that someday, American voters start paying more attention to issues than to turns of phrase. And as long as I'm hoping for things that ain't gonna happen, I hope People Magazine names me as their "Sexiest Man Alive" for 2008.