Pre-gratulations

Since there's so much talk of awful campaign journalism these days, I just wanted to cast my vote for the best reporter/analyst of the entire campaign: by a comfortable margin, it's Slate's William Saletan.

Here are some absolutely essential contributions to any credible collection of 2004 campaign articles:

Catastrophic Success

Out of the Question

The Global Test

Truth Standard

That last selection includes what should have been the journalist's Hippocratic oath for the campaign:

When Bush replied last night [during the third debate] that he refuses to pass this "truth standard," there's really no other way to interpret his position. He's saying that he doesn't have to show you any evidence, because evidence is the sort of thing a Frenchman would ask for.

I know I've been hard on the president lately. I'd like to say something nice about him. I'd like to be "fair and balanced." But my first responsibility as a reporter is to the truth. When one candidate tells half the truth, and the other says the truth doesn't matter, it becomes irresponsible for me or any other journalist not to report that by that standard—the standard of respecting the truth standard—one candidate is head and shoulders above the other.