Assessing the character of Presidential candidates is among the
          most subjective (and most often bungled) tasks that the political
          press self-righteously assigns itself every four years. In the case of
          Al Gore, the media’s collective failure has been virtually complete.
          A mythology of compulsive lying has been fabricated by sloppy
          reporters at such august institutions as The New York Times and
          the Washington Post, then embellished by parrot-like pundits everywhere.

          Nearly all of the examples of supposed prevarication by Mr.
          Gore—from Love Story to Love Canal—have been effectively
          discredited. Still the slanders on Mr. Gore persist, thanks to the
          Republican National Committee and certain eager media accomplices,
          whose fidelity to facts is far less reliable than a Firestone tire.

          The latest frenzy involved two statements by Mr. Gore during his first debate with
          George W. Bush in Boston. The Vice President said that a Florida girl "has to
          stand" in her classroom because there weren’t enough desks for all the students.
          The school principal, a Republican, disputed this remark and the press dutifully
          branded it as another Gore "lie."

          Actually, Mr. Gore was simply repeating what the girl’s father—also a registered
          Republican— had said in a letter he wrote to Mr. Gore, along with a Sept. 10
          clipping from a local newspaper that included a photograph of Kailey Ellis standing
          during her science class.

          Kailey eventually did get a desk when a fellow student politely gave up his seat, so
          Mr. Gore’s use of the present tense was technically wrong. According to the
          Sarasota Herald-Tribune, however, he was essentially right about Kailey’s plight.
          The newspaper reported on Oct. 5 that scores of students have been left without
          desks in terribly overcrowded classes due to recent budget cutbacks. Even with the
          ease of Internet access, none of the brilliant analysts in the national political press
          could be bothered with a glance at the local daily to learn the truth.

          Then there was Mr. Gore’s assertion that he traveled to Texas in 1996 with James
          Lee Witt, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to visit a
          fire-ravaged area. Not so, apparently; instead, the Vice President had made that
          particular trip with the agency’s deputy director, confusing it with one of the 18
          other disaster inspections on which he did accompany Mr. Witt over the past
          several years. That was hardly an intentional falsehood by any reasonable standard,
          and yet the media blew up the tiny blooper to discredit the Democratic nominee.

          It does seem strange that nearly every word spoken by Mr. Gore is pulled from
          context and parsed beyond recognition to prove his unworthiness, while Mr. Bush
          rarely suffers even nominal scrutiny of a murky corner of his background: his
          military service and his business career.

          Back when he was being compared with John McCain, Mr. Bush was asked about
          his 1968 induction into the Texas Air Guard at a time when he was vulnerable to the
          Vietnam draft. Despite testimony under oath indicating that he received special
          consideration as the son of a prominent Texas politician, both he and his father
          denied any misuse of Bush influence. There the matter has rested, except for a few
          articles in Newsweek and the Boston Globe. But research by Marty Heldt, an Iowa
          farmer and former railroad brakeman, and Robert A. Rogers, a retired pilot with 11
          years service in an Air National Guard unit, has unearthed disturbing new facts
          about Mr. Bush’s service.

          Air Force documents unearthed by Mr. Heldt (and posted on TomPaine.com)
          appear to show that after receiving costly training to fly the F-102 jet fighter in
          Texas, Mr. Bush blew off the final two years of his sworn six-year commitment to
          the Guard. He cleared out of his Houston airbase and went to Alabama in 1972 to
          work in a Republican Senatorial campaign. Mr. Bush claims he returned to duty, but
          there is no evidence to support that contention. There are documents indicating that
          he ignored two orders to report for duty—and that he "failed to accomplish" the
          annual physical examination required by the Texas Air Guard, resulting in his
          suspension from flight status in August 1972. Somehow, though, Mr. Bush’s poor
          attendance record and suspension didn’t prevent him from being honorably
          discharged months before he had fulfilled his commitment.

          The documents provided to Mr. Heldt and Mr. Rogers under the Freedom of
          Information Act are incomplete because of privacy restrictions. They don’t show,
          for example, whether a Flight Inquiry Board was convened to investigate Lieutenant
          Bush’s suspension, as would have been normal procedure, according to Mr. Rogers.

          Is Mr. Bush telling the truth when he says he "did the duty necessary" to his
          country? Maybe some of Mr. Gore’s tiresome tormentors should try to find out.