Clark Hoyt has been a tremendous disappointment as the New York Times' public editor. The skepticism that an experienced reporter like Hoyt should have to authority vanishes far too often when it comes to his own boss. Today, Hoyt covers for the Times' embarrassing reporting on Sarah Palin.

Let's start with this:

And, yes, it was inevitable, and right to a more limited degree, that her family would come under the spotlight, too. As Bill Keller, The Times’s executive editor, said, “Senator McCain presented Mrs. Palin’s experience as a mother as one of her qualifications for the job.”

I'll be asking Hoyt and Keller for a source on that one, because I haven't been able to find it.

Here's the relevant "mother" passage of McCain's speech introducing Palin as his running mate.

MCCAIN: The person I'm about to introduce to you was a union member and is married to a union member and understands the problems, the hopes and the values of working people, knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments and health care and the cost of gasoline and groceries; a standout high school point guard; a concerned citizen who became a member of the PTA, then a city council member, and then a mayor, and now a governor...

(APPLAUSE)

... who beat the long odds to win a tough election on a message of reform and public integrity. And I am especially proud to say in the week we celebrate the anniversary of women's suffrage, a devoted...

(APPLAUSE)

MCCAIN: ... a devoted wife and a mother of five.

I'm sorry, but this isn't McCain claiming that her experience as a mother is among her qualifications any more than her experience as a "standout high school point guard" is relevant experience. This is biography. Of course, the Times didn't see any reason to delve into just how talented a point guard Palin was.

The only other substantive comments McCain has made on Palin's qualifications prior to the Times' hit job on her were these on "Fox News Sunday."

John McCain: "What this brings is a spirit of reform and change that is vital now in our nation's capital. Eighty four percent of the American people think the country's on the wrong track. In our Party, we have corruption. We have former members of Congress residing in federal prison, so it's not surprising to me that we've seen an incredible invigoration around our Party and around the nation, not just Republicans, but Democrats. By the way, in the last day and a half or whatever it's been, we have raised $4 million on the Internet. I wish I had taken her a month ago."

...

"She's got the right judgment. She doesn't think, like Senator Obama does, that Iran is a minor irritant. She knows that the surge worked and succeeded and she supported that. Senator Obama still, still to this day, refuses to acknowledge that the surge has succeeded. She's been commander-in-chief of the Alaska Guard that has served back and back. In fact, as you know, she's got a son who's getting ready to go. But she's had the judgment on these issues that Senator Obama, he's had all the wrong judgments. Governor Palin understands these issues, and she understands the challenges that we face, so she's had 12 years of elected office experience, including travelling to Kuwait, including being involved in these issues, and look, I'm so proud that she has displayed the kind of judgment and she has the experience and judgment as an executive. She's run a huge economy up there in the state of Alaska. Twenty percent of our energy comes from the state of Alaska, and energy is obviously one of the key issues for our nation's security."

...

"But the point is, she's been to Kuwait. She's been over there. She's been with her troops. The National Guard that she commands, who have been over there and had the experience, I'm proud of her knowledge of these challenges and issues. And of course as governor, she has had enormous responsibilities, none of which Senator Obama had. When she was in government, he was a community organizer. When she was taking tough positions against her own party, Senator Obama was voting present 130 times in the state legislature. On every tough issue, whatever it was, she was taking them on. That's the kind of judgment that I'm confident that we need in Washington."

Nothing about her experience as a mother qualifying her there either.

I suspect what we have here is an example of what we in the media call "just making stuff up."

But the Times article that drew the strongest complaints from the McCain camp was the one that questioned not her record but his judgment. Published on Tuesday’s front page, the morning after Palin announced her daughter’s pregnancy, the article said that revelation and a series of lesser disclosures called into question how thoroughly McCain had examined Palin’s background.

The article, researched by five reporters and written by Elisabeth Bumiller, quoted anonymous sources as saying that McCain had been holding out hope of choosing Senator Joseph Lieberman instead, and that a campaign team assigned to vet Palin more thoroughly had not arrived in Alaska until the day McCain asked her to be his running mate. A number of Alaska political figures said on the record that they had not found anyone who had been asked anything about Palin by the McCain campaign.

So what? I mean, seriously. She's a relative newcomer to the GOP scene in Alaska and she's made a lot of enemies -- both with the Democrats and the GOP establishment. Is it really any surprise that McCain wouldn't go to her political opponents for vetting information?

As for the rest, well, let's just say that the Times' record on anonymous sources isn't anything to be proud of.

The Times article seemed dramatically at odds with one in The Washington Post two days earlier. The Post article quoted McCain advisers as saying that Palin had been thoroughly vetted, including an F.B.I. background check, and that, “Far from being a last-minute tactical move or second choice when better-known alternatives were eliminated, Palin was very much in McCain’s thinking from the beginning of the selection process.”

For the record, an FBI background check -- the kind required for security clearances and the like -- would hardly be conducted as part of the vetting process. A follow-up Post story makes it clear that the mis-reported "background check" was simply a query to the FBI to make sure that Palin wasn't under criminal investigation.

Her name, along with others, was submitted to the FBI under a routine inquiry into whether she was the subject of a criminal investigation.

Back to Keller's "Yes-man":

So was The Times story wrong, as the McCain camp said? It did contain one error. It said that one potentially embarrassing revelation about Palin was her membership for two years in the Alaskan Independence Party, which favors a vote on whether the state should secede. The assertion was based on an announcement by the party’s chairwoman, Lynette Clark, which The Times failed to tell readers. That was a mistake. “We should have attributed it,” Bumiller said. The next day, Clark said she had been wrong. It turns out that Palin’s husband, Todd, had belonged to the party for a time, and she had addressed its annual convention. The Times corrected the error in two follow-up stories.

For the record, because Keller skips over them in an effort to excuse the Times' reporting, the other claims made in the Bumiller story as evidence of a failure to properly vet Palin were:

• Bristol Palin's pregnancy.
• Todd Palin's 22-year-old DUI
• That she has hired a lawyer to represent her in an ethics investigation over whether she fired Alaska's public safety commissioner because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law.

Of course, McCain has acknowledged that he knew all of these things, so how this is an example of a failure to properly vet Palin is unclear.

But the main thrust of its reporting on the vetting process appears to be holding up. The Post said the next day that a lengthy in-person background interview of Palin by the head of McCain’s vetting team did not happen until the day before she was chosen. It also acknowledged that it had been incorrect when it reported that the F.B.I. had checked out Palin. In her home state, the Anchorage Daily News reported that it had found only one person who was asked anything about the governor before McCain selected her. That was the attorney representing her in an investigation of whether she had abused her power in office.

“We stand by our reporting,” said Richard Stevenson, the editor in charge of Times election coverage.

Of course you stand by your reporting. It's still not clear however, how this qualified for as a front page story given the fact that McCain already knew all of this. Seriously. If the news hook is "McCain didn't properly vet his vice presidential pick" and all you can come up with is stuff that came up as part of the vetting process, then maybe, just maybe you ought to re-think your premise.

By choosing a running mate unknown to most of the nation, and doing so just before the Republican National Convention, John McCain made it inevitable that there would be a frantic media vetting. It turns out that Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, that she sent e-mail complaining about a lack of disciplinary action against a state trooper who was going through a messy custody battle with her sister, and that she never made a decision as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, one of her qualifications cited by McCain.

Have you perchance noticed what's missing from both the Bumiller story that sparked this furor and the Hoyt apologia? What's missing is the "why" in "why would Palin want this trooper fired?" Hoyt suggests it was because of a "messy custody battle." The truth is that the trooper was suspended five days for:

• Shooting his 10-year-old step-son with a taser
• Shooting a moose out of season and without a license
• Drinking an alcoholic beverage and driving in his patrol car
• Allegedly threatening to kill Sarah Palin's sister and father if she hired a lawyer for their divorce proceeding.

The real vetting question should be: Why couldn't this reform-minded governor get a guy who shouldn't be a lawman fired?

The drip-drip-drip of these stories seems like partisanship to Palin’s partisans. But they fill out the picture of who she is, and they represent a free press doing its job, investigating a candidate who might one day be the leader of the Free World.

That's good to know. When are you going to start on Barack Obama?