Byron York reports that the McCain campaign has made a final determination not to use Barack Obama’s relation to Jeremiah Wright as part of its brief against Obama’s character and trustworthiness. To put it mildly, this makes no sense; if Bill Ayers is an issue, then Wright is an issue, and a more salient one. In fact, it makes so little sense a supposition advanced by Michael Crowley on the New Republic’s campaign blog last week seems like a logical explanation.

What if the refusal to use Wright — which, according to Byron York, comes directly from McCain himself — is the result of a private deal between McCain and Colin Powell? McCain desperately wanted Powell’s endorsement, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to get it, desperately did not want Powell to endorse Obama; there really might have been a quid pro quo here.

Remember that, alone among the Bush administration’s senior foreign-policy figures, Powell has always gotten a pass from McCain, who considers him an old friend — even though Powell was working at cross purposes against McCain’s favored policy in Iraq almost from the beginning. This is a relationship in which Powell holds the whip hand, and the McCain refusal to discuss Jeremiah Wright is so bizarre it is only explicable in a context like this one.