Reporters (starting with all-too-moderate moderator Jim Lehrer) thus do not hector W. for "clarification" when he takes credit for an HMO patients bill of rights that he vetoed in 1995, and that became law in 1997 without his signature after he opposed it again. The public's self-glamorizing watchdogs cannot be troubled much to note that he takes credit for a hate crimes bill that he opposed. Few voices rise in righteous indignation when Bush dodges Gore's point that Texas ranks at or near the bottom on health insurance coverage while vastly overstating Texas spending for healthcare for the poor by claiming a total of $4.7 billion while neglecting to note that $3.5 billion, three-quarters of the total, comes from charity care and local government.

The same journals that took seriously the piddling charge that Gore padded his Vietnam record show decidedly little interest in W.'s lies and evasions about his service in the Texas National Guard (where he served in order to dodge going to Vietnam), as documented by Tom Rhodes in the Sunday Times of London and Joe Conason in the New York Observer but scarcely mentioned elsewhere.

On television, Bush's flaws in logic and fact get more attention from Letterman and Leno than the political pundits, who practice knowingness without knowledge. Thus did they declare W. to have passed Lehrer's foreign-policy quiz in the second presidential debate because he was quick to answer thumbs-up or thumbs-down to a list of military interventions. But for all their vigilance about body language and stylistic tics, reporters, editorialists and pundits did not note any lapses of substance:

• The first intervention that W. thumbs-upped, Lebanon in 1983, was an unmitigated disaster, resulting in much unnecessary death from American shelling, culminating in a terror bombing that killed 241 American Marines asleep in their barracks. Television pundits did not leap to remember. (Thomas Friedman, in the New York Times, did, though.)
• The Gulf War, which W. of course embraced, became necessary when his father's ambassador, April Glaspie, signaled at a meeting with Saddam Hussein that the U.S. would not react badly if he marched into Kuwait. Some foreign-policy success! This fact has slipped down the memory hole, lubricated by an oblivious press corps. For that matter, Saddam Hussein built up his bloated power -- and was responsible for thousands of Iraqi and Iranian deaths -- during the 1980s, when it was the administrations of Reagan and, you guessed it, George H.W. Bush who green-lighted the Iraq attack on Iran.
• Bush said: "I hope our European friends become the peacekeepers in Bosnia and in the Balkans. I hope that they put the troops on the ground, so that we can withdraw our troops and focus our military on fighting and winning war." But already 85 percent of the troops in Kosovo are European.

For this performance, conventional wisdom awarded the governor high marks on foreign policy. Manner trumps matter. Even Salon's Alicia Montgomery wrote that, in Winston-Salem, N.C., Bush demonstrated "command of the issues." Evidently, ignorance is no disqualification for "command of the issues."

When the emperor has no clothes, it's considered bad form to comment on his anatomy. Instead, the commentators review his performance: The emperor today displayed the style for which his appearances are renowned ... The emperor dressed better than expected, though not so well as in his last display. The designated commentators are more reluctant than anyone else to blow the whistle, for they are hired entertainers with an above-it-all position to lose. This is a democracy, of course, so instead of emperors, we have governors, but the same principle applies -- when the governor is an airhead, the pundit who wishes to entertain his public finds him floating higher than expected. The pundits do not want to misbehave.

Nor do the network news shows want to take precious minutes to demonstrate that Bush's knock on Social Security for delivering only a 2 percent return flunks out. The 2 percent net is what contributors ultimately get because they are paying for their mothers' and fathers' pensions. (Too complicated to explain, the networks think, not understanding the point themselves or feeling obligated to learn it.) Those who point this out are either Democratic "partisans" or they get only a stripped-down sound bite to say that Bush was wrong but no chance to give reasons. Reasons! How quaint. Reasons are too much to ask. If the candidate cannot be expected to give reasons, why should the candidate's critics be different?

Nor do the media take time to explain that the half-reason why Bush can claim to be "a uniter not a divider" is that the Democratic Party in Texas is like a Republican Party elsewhere. When Bush distances himself from awful Washington, they do not trouble themselves to remind voters that the party that paralyzed government during the Clinton years, the party in charge of Congress when it shut down the government, the party that stomped on healthcare, was the GOP: the Governor's Own Party.

What do the news organizations know and when do they know it? Do they care to find out what they don't know? If they decide they are not obliged to let the rest of us know what we may not feel like knowing, why are they superior to the pandering politicians they scorn? If they are embarrassed to point fingers at a nonentity who is within two weeks of the presidency, where is their pretense of journalistic craft?

As in 1980, the news organizations, embarrassed to be called "the liberal media," are bending over backward to be kind to thoughtless Republicans. Today, as then, their idea of "fairness" is to chuckle and give the smiling gibberish-spouter a special dispensation. Today, as then, they bend so far backward they fall down on the hopelessly old-fashioned task of informing the public. Now, again, they are making themselves useful idiots for an empty charmer.

Salon News A Salon-eye view of the day's news, with investigative reports, analysis and interviews with newsmakers.