Has the political press abdicated its role?

Most of this week's talk about the presidential race concerned the vicepresidential debate, but your reporter was still chewing on something he heard over and over in the coverage following the first McCain-Obama matchup — the complaint that, when pressed by moderator Jim Lehrer, neither candidate offered any specifics about what he would give up, in terms of the priorities that you would bring as president of the United States, as a result of having to pay for the financial rescue plan.

First, it's not even strictly accurate that neither candidate offered cuts to his respective agenda. Barack Obama offered that he might have to sacrifice individual components of his alternative-energy investment plan. And John McCain, in an answer that didn't receive nearly enough attention, proposed "a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs."

But more to the point, as the press and punditry wring their hands over a political environment in which neither candidate is "willing to level" with the American people about the hard choices facing the next president, perhaps these media actors could take a moment to consider what they have done to create this environment.

Because I'm willing to bet the trailer money that, had either McCain or Obama

sacrificed a major pillar of his domesticor

foreign-policy agenda on the altar of budgetary restraint, the press would have pounced. Would the headlines have read: "In Laudatory Moment of Campaign Candor, McCain/Obama Levels With Taxpayers"? Perhaps. But I'm guessing they would more closely resemble something along the lines of, for McCain: "Straight Talk Express in Ditch: McCain Admits U.S. Can No Longer Afford Iraq Occupation." Or, for Obama: "Short Changed: Obama Confesses He'll Drop Health Care Reform, Rationale for Campaign."

Or worse, the current fashion for process obsessed campaign reporting would yield breathless commentary and instant analysis about how one or the other's admission was "bound to hurt him" — and how the opposite party's candidate was "sure to pounce" on the admission. Conspicuously absent, of course, would be any sense that such a line of attack would constitute an unfair punishment for having told the truth. And if such an attack came, the candidate on the receiving end could probably forget about any impartial defense coming from the press, which long ago abdicated any role for itself as an independent arbiter of the truth in favor of the much safer "he said/ she said" model.

We've heard a lot lately about "gotcha" journalism, mostly in response to Sarah Palin's shaky answers to interview questions about everything from the Bush Doctrine to the Supreme Court to her choice of reading material. To my mind, though, the real gotcha journalism is that which, when it comes to truth-telling on hard choices, offers a choice of damned if you don't, damned more if you do.

American voters are often criticized for what some describe as the expectation that they can get something from the government without having to give something else up. Call it a free ride or something-for-nothing mentality. Taxes remain the classic example, as everyone wants them to be lower while few are willing to sacrifice their own pet programs in the name of budgetary responsibility. Our politicians, too, come under fire for enabling this attitude. There is surely merit to both criticisms, and the electoral evidence to back them up. But before members of the American political press go pointing fingers, we might also consider what we have done to foster an attitude that invites bad faith and corrodes our democratic processes.