Sunday's New York Times public editor column defended the paper's decision in the waning weeks of the 2008 presidential election to "cut bait" on a story that would have tied the Obama campaign to illegal (Hoyt's article characterizes it as "impermissible," just in case you wondered where he was coming from) coordination with ACORN.

John Hinderaker over at Powerline, ably dissected Hoyt's column, showing that his defense of the paper's decision to spike a potentially troubling story for Obama was not much a defense at all.

Perhaps more interesting was Mickey Kaus' take on the issue.

Are you really confident that the NYT wouldn't spike an anti-Obama story in the waning days of the election out of fear--conscious or semi-subconscious--that it might badly hurt him? I had a revealing argument with a politically sophisticated friend--call him "Max"-- when the "game changer" charge first surfaced. Max's argument: Suppose it were a scandal sufficiently big to sink Obama. Any red-blooded Times reporter would be proud to publish it and tack Obama's scalp to the wall. To have taken down a presidential nominee--that would be a professional achievement, maybe a Pulitzer. They'd be high-fiving in the newsroom.  

I think my friend is right about the culture of the newsroom--about 45 years ago. As for today, I think he's living in a dreamworld. Even if the Times had published such a story, Times reporters would certainly not have high-fived the colleague who'd cost Obama the election. Not after two terms of Bush. And I have no faith the paper would even have published it (before allowing the reporter to slink out of the building). In part, that's because I have no faith that I'd publish it. The old adversarial ethic--I play my role and let the system take care of the moral consequences--rightly went mostly out the window with the ascension of the Sixties cohort.

The mainstream media was covering for Obama because they hate George W. Bush and the Republicans -- and they still haven't come to grips with that fact.

Victor Davis Hanson on that very subject:

But it is quite astounding that the mainstream liberal media — NY Times, Washington Post, NPR, PBS, Time, Newsweek, etc. — has simply offered no substantive criticism of Obama's flips on renditions, military tribunals, wiretaps, intercepts, Iraq, or — given their past fury over the Bush deficits — the Obama plan to run up more red ink in a year than Bush did in eight. 

Bush was constantly criticized by mainstream conservatives for his comprehensive immigration proposals, for deficit spending, for failure to veto any bills in the first term, for No Child Left Behind, for the prescription drug benefit, for the Harriet Miers nomination, for the first pullback from Fallujah, for appointments like Scott McClellan and "Brownie," etc.

The result, I think, will prove fatal for the media. For the last eight years, rendition (hey, they even made a hit-piece movie about the supposedly awful practice), intercepts, military tribunals, and Iraq were sort of the refrains of the liberal-media choruses. Looking back, in light of the Obama media, was such hysteria simply politics, pure and simple? Bush did it: bad; Obama did it: fine? Was the issue always just Bush, and never (as alleged) the Bush profligacy in spending — given the silence now over Obama's crazed borrowing? Was there never any real concern about the supposed "cultural of corruption" when the media seized on a Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, Mark Foley, etc. — given the pass granted to Rangel, Dodd, and the tax-fraud nominations to the Cabinet.

In other words, to pick up any of these magazines and newspapers now is to see tortured apologies to explain why a flip-flopping Obama is playing "long-term" or "not going to get suckered by his base" or "first has to clean up the Bush mess" instead of disinterested commentary about (a) the disconnect between what Obama now does and what he once said; (b) the staggering amount of debt added, and how to pay the sums off.

It should be no wonder that circulation continues to decline.