Who's who.

• Position: 10 Miles Square

We hear that the big debate in the campaign of John F. Kerry is whether the candidate should visit Iraq. Stay tuned.

All campaign staffs try to control the flow of information to and from their candidate. Smart candidates seek to circumvent this barrier by carrying their own cell phones and sharing the number with a handful of longtime friends and advisors. John Kerry is one of them. Among those who have the number and with whom Kerry talks frequently are former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Kerry also takes calls from--and listens closely to--a group of old friends, as The New York Times reported late last month. There's Tom Kiley, a veteran Boston pollster; John Martilla, a longtime Boston strategist; Ron Rosenblith, a political director of Kerry campaigns from the 1980s; David Thorne, a college classmate; and Michael Whouley, the political operative widely credited with getting the Senator's Iowa ground operation in shape last fall and helping pull out the win in that crucial first primary.

Another frequent caller is Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass). He and Kerry have not been particularly close through the years, but Markey won Kerry's affection with his tireless advocacy of the Senator's primary campaign, even in its darkest hours.

Markey was one of several from the Kerry camp who tried to dissuade Ralph Nader from running. Over the course of several conversations, mostly by phone, Markey floated a number of arguments including, we're told, the possibility that Nader might become some kind of "consumer advocate czar" in the Kerry administration. The congressman's chief of staff, David Moulton, who once worked for Nader, will say only that Markey urged Nader to "use his leverage" to get Kerry to make consumer issues a more prominent part of his campaign agenda. Asked by our colleague Paul Glastris, whose wife (and Monthly books editor) Kukula Glastris also once worked for consumer advocate, whether the consumer czar job had been floated, Nader responded: "Post-modern Greek mythology."

Speaking of phones and doorkeepers, it s widely understood that to have real influence in Washington, one must be on good terms, not so much with Cabinet secretaries, as with White House secretaries--that is, the assistants who sit in the outer offices of the president's senior advisors. As with much else in this town, uber-lobbyist/anti-tax activist Grover Norquist seems to understand this rule as well as anybody. Norquist...