The New York Times puts its view of the Republican ticket on full display today in a front-page "man in the News" profile asserting that George W. Bush "will have, if elected, one of the thinnest resumes in public service of any president in the last century." In fact, Mr. Bush's experience as the two-term governor of a large state, Texas, is probably more substantial than Bill Clinton's experience as the governor of a small state, Arkansas. And we don't recall much handwringing at the Times back in 1992 over how thin Mr. Clinton's resume was.

The same profile describes Mr. Cheney as "a rich, white relic of his father's administration." These are the Times' news columns, remember, and that is how the article refers to Mr. Cheney on its first reference. The reference to the shade of Mr. Cheney's skin is another indication that the Times won't let the Republicans win no matter what they do on the race issue. If the Republicans appoint blacks like Clarence Thomas or Condoleezza Rice, the Times accuses the Republicans of using them as "props." If the Republicans appoint whites, the Times snipes about that, too.

An editorial in today's Times shows the policy views that underlie these kinds of attacks. It suggests that Mr. Bush "could start by laying out exactly why the economy needs the proposed 10-year, $1.9 trillion tax cut that would start in 2002 and eat up the federal surplus." Such a tax cut would probably stimulate the economy, but by framing the issue on those terms the Times misunderstands the moral underpinning of the tax issue, which dates back to the Boston Tea Party and the American revolution. That moral underpinning says that the money earned by a free man's labor belongs to that individual; if the government wants to take any of it in taxes, the burden of proof should be on the government. It isn't Bush who should have to justify why a tax cut would be good for the economy; the money belongs to the individuals who earned it to begin with, and the default position should be that the money stays with them. It's Al Gore who should have to justify why he supports keeping the tax burden as a percentage of American GDP at a historical peacetime high.

When is a black person not really a person, but merely a "prop"? When the blacks in question are Republicans, and the newspaper is The New York Times. In a stunning "editorial observer" column that goes so far as to liken the Republican convention to a minstrel show -- a comic variety show with performers in blackface -- the Times today writes, "subtract the minority props -- the break dancers and the gospel choir and the beaming schoolchildren -- and what you have is the same ultra-white party that shocked many Americans' sensibilities at the 1992 and 1996 conventions. The deluge of black and Latin faces on display in Philadelphia is deceptive, given that the party's delegates and senior managers are as white as they have ever been. "

The column goes on to say, "The problem for the G.O.P. is how to move from patronizing spectacles like this one, in which blacks and Latinos serve as props, to a state of affairs where minority Americans are both welcomed and actively recruited into the party as full-fledged participants."

Well, we wonder how General Colin Powell, who rose to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Condoleezza Rice, the Bush foreign policy adviser who speaks Russian, has a doctoral degree and was provost of Stanford University, and Rep. J.C. Watts, the Republican from Oklahoma who is co-chairman of the convention, feel about being classified by the Times as "props" or minstrels. Or how George W. Bush's Hispanic nephew feels about it. The Times is accusing the Republicans of being patronizing, but, when you think about it, the newspaper is pretty patronizing itself.

A news analysis elsewhere in today's Times takes up the same issue. The news analysis at least allows that "Neither Ms. Rice nor General Powell was on the dais as window-dressing. Both are eminent figures, whose success in the academic and military worlds speaks volumes about the achievements of black Americans in the last couple of decades." True enough. Hold on, though, the story goes on: "But there was window-dressing as well -- black singers, black choirs, black candidates for lesser offices and black children seated at school desks in the rather contrived backdrop to the speech of the prospective nominee's wife."

The Republicans can't win here. If they didn't have blacks on stage at the convention, they'd be accused of running a racist, all-white convention. If they do have blacks on stage at the convention, they are accused of using them as "props" and "window-dressing."

What's going on here? Simple: it has little to do with race, and lots to do with policy positions. Consider one of George W. Bush's supposed sins against black voters, as portrayed in the Times news analysis: "Mr. Bush has also described Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, dyed-in-the-wool conservatives whose very names are anathema to many blacks -- even though Mr. Thomas is himself black -- as model Supreme Court justices." Ah -- there's Mr. Bush's problem -- he might name a black person like Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. And that would be terrible, because while Mr. Thomas is black, he's not a liberal. Which makes him, by the Times' definition, a "prop" or "window-dressing."

If the Times wanted to actually report on black politics in a way that does more than merely advance its liberal agenda, it might have reported on the new Businessweek poll showing that 78% of African Americans say cutting taxes is "very important" to them, while only 55% of non-Hispanic whites do. Or it might write more about the vast support in the black community for school vouchers. But that might suggest that Mr. Bush's policies actually might prove attractive to black voters, and helpful to black citizens, and that those blacks on stage are there for reasons other than as "props" or "window-dressing."

A "news analysis" on the front page of this morning's Times discloses what issues the newspaper thinks should be given more prominence: "This year, neither convention is likely to tackle such important issues as drugs, campaign finance and the gulf between the rich and the poor." Well, it's unclear if by "drugs" the Times means illegal narcotics or legal prescription pharmaceuticals for senior citizens, so we'll leave that aside. But it may just be that the reason campaign finance reform isn't being tackled is that the American people realize that more campaign laws aren't the answer when we have politicians who don't obey the already-existing laws. And that the people also realize that money in politics is no guarantee of success (just ask Ross Perot or Steve Forbes). And that the people also realize that spending on campaigns is a sign of a vigorous public debate in a democracy, not an evil that needs to be outlawed. The "gulf between the rich and poor" is another issue that Americans for the most part aren't concerned about; there's enough mobility between income levels in American society that what most Americans are worried about isn't erasing the gulf but working hard to get themselves or their children higher up on the income ladder. Even those who believe poverty is an important political issue tend to be bothered not by the fact that some people are very rich but by the fact that some people are very poor. It's an absolute issue, not a relative one. Most Americans aren't bothered by the existence of rich people; they want to become rich people. The American Enterprise Institute has done some detailed work on the income inequality issue, bearing this out. In other words, what the Times calls "important issues" aren't really all that, and that may be why they aren't getting much play at the conventions.

What Are They Smoking? The "Public Lives" column in the metro section of this morning's New York Times contains an admiring profile of Ethan Nadelmann, a man who devotes his energy to repealing laws against narcotics. "I don't think adults should be punished for what they put into their bodies," he said. Neither, of course, does the Times, at least on the tobacco issue, where the newspaper thinks that the punishment shouldn't be directed at the cigarette users, but at the tobacco companies, and that the means shouldn't be criminalization of tobacco sales, but runaway civil jury verdicts. The one-source profile of Nadelmann naturally omits references to the public health consequences of drug use or its tendency to wreck families and promote crime, dwelling instead on matters such as the fact that Nadelmann is left-handed and the son of a Reconstructionist rabbi. And naturally, it doesn't consider complexities such as whether, if drugs are legalized as the Nadelmann types suggest, the consequence will be an array of tobacco-style lawsuits against narcotics smugglers. Come to think of it, the quickest way to win the drug war might just be to legalize the products and then let the tort lawyers loose.

Oh, That's The Reason: An article in the international section of this morning's Times about the political situation of Prime Minister Barak explains it as follows: "At the heart of Mr. Barak's political problem is a 1996 change in electoral procedures providing for with separate voting for prime minister and members of Parliament. Although Mr. Barak won a strong mandate in May, 1999, defeating Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud with 56 percent of the vote, Mr. Barak has had to deal with a fragmented, unwieldy Parliament with many small parties." Oh, so that's what's at the heart of Barak's political problem. Silly us. We thought it was that the Arabs didn't want to make peace with Israel and that Israelis think Barak is too willing to divide Jerusalem and give up the Golan Heights in exchange for mere promises from the Arabs. (Never mind that the first sentence of the Times' explanation is impenetrable from the standpoint of grammar.)

The same article refers to Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon as a "hawkish, hard-line Likud leader." This is wrong in three ways. First, the redundancy factor (somebody call William Safire's "squad squad"). Second, the one-sidedness: you never see Mr. Barak being described as the "dovish, soft-line Labor leader." Finally, as smartertimes.com noted yesterday, in the context of right-wing Israeli politics, General Sharon is a moderate pragmatist; for instance, he dismantled an Israeli settlement in the Sinai peninsula, despite right-wing opposition, as part of the implementation of the Camp David accord between Israel and Egypt.

If there were any doubt remaining that President Clinton is intending to divide Jerusalem, it should be dispelled by the editorial in this morning's Times. Mr. Clinton's remarks on Friday signaling a willingness to move the American embassy in Israel to what he called "West Jerusalem" have been widely interpreted as an attempt to help Israel by recognizing its capital. But the remarks in fact signaled a dangerous attempt to divide the city. The Times grasps the implications of Mr. Clinton's remarks and in today's editorial essentially endorses Mr. Clinton's plan to divide the city. The Times editorial, as a result, is full of language about "West Jerusalem" and "East Jerusalem" and "a new, Palestinian-ruled city of Arab Jerusalem." The editorial claims that "East Jerusalem" is "the central issue of the peace talks."

The missing fact, of course, is that since 1967 there has not been "West Jerusalem" or "East Jerusalem" but only one united city of Jerusalem. Mr. Clinton's attempt to divide the city is a blatant violation of an American law, the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act, which stated as the "policy of the United States" that "Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected" and that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the state of Israel."

But that is not the only distortion or missing fact that underlies the Clinton-New York Times approach to the Jerusalem issue. The most shameless is the attempt to enlist -- posthumously! -- Yitzhak Rabin in the attempt to divide the Israeli capital. So, for instance, a news story in this morning's Times reports with respect to the embassy move: "Some Israeli prime ministers, including Yitzhak Rabin, have also been careful not to encourage the issue, on the grounds that it would unnecessarily inflame the Palestinians and set back peace prospects." The best answer to that claim is simply to quote Rabin's own remarks during his final visit to America before being assassinated. The date was October 25, 1995, and the setting was a "Jerusalem 3000" ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. "In Israel, we all agree on one notion," Rabin said. "There are no 'two Jerusalems.' There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not a subject for compromise." Rabin went on, reacting to the passage by Congress of the Jerusalem Embassy Act: "Now is a time to say thank you. . . . We welcome every new embassy in Jerusalem. We extend a particular welcome to our great friend, the United States of America."

Pete King, 'Conservative': A cover story about Rep. Rick Lazio in this morning's New York Times magazine portrays Mr. Lazio as a moderate. A distinction is made between Mr. Lazio and "conservative" Rep. Pete King, another Republican from Long Island. Only by the Times' skewed standard could Mr. King be considered a conservative. King has a 41 percent lifetime rating from the AFL-CIO and a 76 percent rating from the American Conservative Union, placing him roughly in the center of the political spectrum. As the Times magazine article itself points out lower down, Mr. King has been a vocal critic of Newt Gingrich. Mr. King was one of the few Republicans who voted against impeaching President Clinton. He's a friend of AFL-CIO president John Sweeney. Mr. King is basically a moderate Northeastern Republican like Lazio. Calling him "conservative" says not much about Mr. King but a lot about the Times.

Gun Buyback: A story in the national section of today's New York Times portrays congressional Republicans and "opponents of gun control" as blocking an effort by the Clinton administration "to buy back guns from private owners." The issue is framed mainly as an example of the National Rifle Association flexing its lobbying muscle. But a report in the metro section on July 11 quoted a respected expert as saying the gun buyback programs don't have the desired effect of reducing gun-related violence. The July 11 article quoted Lawrence Sherman, the president of the International Society of Criminology and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, as saying, "I think they're wasting their money." The July 11 article said Mr. Sherman has written a recent study for the Justice department that listed gun buyback programs under the heading "what doesn't work." And the July 11 article said Mr. Sherman warned that individuals who took advantage of the program could use the money they are paid for their old guns to buy more powerful new guns.

What's going on here? Simple: when a gun buyback program is announced by the Republican -appointed New York City police commissioner, the Times is against the program. When it is announced by the Democratic president and blocked by congressional Republicans, the Times is for the program. Professor Sherman is probably correct on the merits, but the nature of the Times is such that even when it gets a story right on July 11, it can manage to miss the point on July 30.

Omar Who? A story in the Sunday Styles section of this morning's Times contains a reference to "Omar Walker," "the 29-year-old founder of BlackPlanet.com and an Internet analyst on CNBC." We think maybe they mean Omar Wasow. The BlackPlanet.com site names him as its executive director and an analyst on MSNBC.

One of the talents of President Clinton is that he can damage Israel even when he is trying to help it. This is the case with his statement of yesterday, as reported in this morning's New York Times: "You know, I have always wanted to move our embassy to West Jerusalem. We have a designated site there. I have not done so because I don't want to do anything to undermine our ability to help to broker a secure and fair and lasting peace for Israelis and for Palestinians."

Watch out. The use of the phrase "West Jerusalem" by an American president at this juncture should set off alarm bells for Congress, Israelis and anyone who opposes a divided Jerusalem. "West Jerusalem" is a phrase that was used primarily from 1948 to 1967 to refer to the part of the city that was under Israeli control; at the time, the rest of the city -- "East Jerusalem" -- was under Jordanian control. It's an artificial distinction that was established by the barbed-wire boundaries of a wartime truce; since Israel took control of the entire city in the 1967 war, the city has been simply Jerusalem. During the period of "West Jerusalem" and "East Jerusalem" -- that is, 1948 to 1967 -- Jews had no access to the Western Wall, and the Jordanians used the gravestones from Jewish cemeteries to build army latrines. Synagogues in the Old City's Jewish quarter were destroyed.

Recognizing the importance of an undivided Jerusalem, the Congress has marked the point at least three separate times. In 1990, the Congress unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 106, declaring that Congress "strongly believes that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected." In 1992, to mark the 25th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, the Senate and House of Representatives unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 113, reaffirming congressional sentiment that Jerusalem must remain an undivided city. And in 1995, by overwhelming bipartisan majorities, Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which became American law. The 1995 act stated as the "policy of the United States" that "Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected" and that "Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the state of Israel." There is no reference in the 1995 act to "East Jerusalem" or "West Jerusalem," because its drafters, in their wisdom, realized that it wasn't worth redividing the city in order to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Times story this morning is totally oblivious to these nuances. The Times story also mischaracterizes the 1995 act, writing that "Congress called for moving the embassy five years ago." Hello? It's not that Congress "called for" moving the embassy, it's that it passed a law requiring the embassy to be moved. There was a provision allowing the president to invoke a national security waiver. But the waiver applies only to the financial penalty to the State Department budget that the act imposes if the embassy is not moved; the waiver does not apply to the requirement to move the embassy. The administration is in violation of the law right now, and one of the key senators behind the 1995 act, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is on the record saying that. (Not to the Times, of course, but to another newspaper.)

Psychobabble: The New York Times this morning presses ahead with its endless attempts to explain the presidential election in terms of personality and stagecraft rather than issues. This will continue so long as the Republican candidate is ahead in the polls. Responding to a remark by Al Gore that "You and I know this is not about show business," columnist Frank Rich responds, "What country does this guy think he's living in?" A long front-page article about George W. Bush probes his marriage, his religious practices and his drinking habits. Sure, readers want to know who the candidates are, just like readers want to know who the polls show is winning. It seems, however, as though the space the Times has been devoting to the personal biographical profiles has dwarfed the space the paper is devoting to the policy proposals of the candidates or to their records as public officials. As for the Texas governor's drinking habits, the thing that comes to mind is President Lincoln's response when someone complained to him about General Grant's lack of sobriety. "Find out what he's been drinking and send a case of it to all my other generals," Lincoln is said to have responded.

Burglary: The Times gives prominent display this morning to a violent burglary of an Upper West Side townhouse. There's a full-length story that begins on the front of the metro section. It was a terrible crime, no doubt, but itÕs also an example of the disproportionate attention the Times devotes to crimes that happen in wealthy neighborhoods and victimize wealthy professionals. To be sure, there's an argument that these crimes are more newsworthy because they are more unusual. But they are also a way for the Times to send its readers and advertisers a subtle message about the paper's intended audience.There were probably a half-dozen fatal crimes in Brooklyn and the Bronx in the last month that didn't get a tenth of the space in the Times that this non-fatal burglary of an Upper West Side townhouse got.

Mixed Signals on the Heat: It's been a cooler than usual July, so beaches and swimming pools are more crowded than usual. Or, it's been a cooler than usual July, so beaches and swimming pools are less crowded that usual. Take your pick -- a Times dispatch today on the weather situation manages to attribute both trends to the same weather. "At Jones beach, attendance this July was up more than 25 percent over last July, said George Gorman, director of recreation for the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation on Long Island. . . 'Last year was a very hot, humid summer. We found that beach attendance went down and people went to more malls.'" A photo next to the story depicts an empty swimming pool, and a cutline says, "Lifeguard duty was boring yesterday at the village pool in Pleasantville, N.Y. Mild weather has meant less crowded pools this summer."

Hmm. Maybe when it gets really hot, fewer people go to the beach and more people go to pools?

Shift on Abortion: A news story in the international section of this morning's Times reports on a bombing in Germany that wounded 9. The article says, "One of the wounded, identified by the police only as Tatyana, 26, was 6 months pregnant. The unborn child was killed when shrapnel pierced her stomach." Wait a minute. If an "unborn child" can be "killed," then it must be . . . alive. We're not sure how that sentence got past the Times' editors, who generally consider a pregnant woman to be carrying not an "unborn child" but a "fetus" or a "choice."

A front-page story in this morning's New York Times reports on a grand jury's decision not to file criminal charges against the New York police detective who fatally shot Patrick Dorismond. The article says, "To police critics and Mr. Dorismond's family, his death was a symbol of a department whose aggressive tactics and appetite for ever-climbing arrest statistics caused detectives to draw a young man into a scuffle that led to his killing."

Well, this may be how some police critics frame the issue, but to leave it at that, as the Times does, misses the point. The New York police in the Bratton-Giuliani-Safir era have little appetite for "ever-climbing arrest statistics." What they have an appetite for is ever-declining crime statistics. In the past, police officials may have been rewarded for the number of arrests in their precincts, but after a while, smart police chiefs and academic scholars of policing such as George Kelling figured out that rewarding arrests is beside the point and even counterproductive. In some instances, an increase in arrests may simply indicate an increase in crime, which isn't something that the department would have an appetite for. The goals and incentives within the New York Police Department have been pretty thoroughly adjusted to make crime reduction, not arrests, the key statistical motivator.

Tax Cuts and Deficits: An article on the op-ed page of today's New York Times faults Richard Cheney for supporting tax cuts that allegedly created federal budget deficits. "A backer of the tax cuts that created the 80s deficits," a pull-out quote from the article says. The article contains a reference to "President Reagan's budget-busting tax plan." The article ignores the fact that government tax revenues actually increased after the Reagan tax cuts as a result of the economic growth they created. It wasn't the tax cuts that created the deficits, it was the runaway spending that was being passed at the time by the Democratic-controlled Congress. The spending increased even more than tax revenues did. Not that the Reagan-era deficits were so horrible; we've managed to dig ourselves out now into a surplus. And the military buildup that also contributed to the deficits helped win the Cold War, creating a peace dividend that saves taxpayers money in the long run.

"Kathie" Levine: Given that Cathie Levine is the press secretary to Senator Schumer of New York and was also his campaign spokeswoman, you would think that the New York Times would know how to spell her name. Nope. In the "Public Lives" column of the metro section in today's New York editions, an item reporting that Ms. Levine is joining Hillary Clinton's campaign renders her name incorrectly, as "Kathie" Levine. It's spelled Cathie, with a "C."

The "Making Books" column in the arts section of this morning's New York Times reports on three best-selling fiction writers. A book editor is quoted as saying about one of the authors, "A lot of his audience are women, and I see white women reading his books on the subway all the time, which is unusual to see people reading novels on the subway."

Smartertimes.com rides the subway too (only when our driver has the day off) and can report that, actually, it's not that unusual to see people reading novels there. In fact, it's pretty common. So common that quite a few publishers even buy advertising space in the subway cars to promote new novels.

Arguably, it's the book editor making this claim of unusualness and not the Times. Still, it seems like the newspaper might want to signal its readers to the fact that it is quoting someone who is saying something at odds with reality. Or the quote could have just been truncated after the words "all the time."

Lost in Brooklyn: The Times this morning again demonstrates its ignorance of Brooklyn geography. In the last couple of weeks the newspaper misplaced one Brooklyn neighborhood and misspelled another. Today the "Residential Sales" column in the House & Home section refers to the sale of a townhouse on "Remson Street" in Brooklyn Heights. It's Remsen Street, with an "e."

A news story in yesterday's New York Times had declared that by selecting Richard Cheney as his running mate, Governor George W. Bush "made a risk-free and respectable choice." Today's front-page news analysis furiously back-pedals away from that statement, saying, "The Cheney pick is not devoid of political upsides -- or risks," and concluding with the statement, "in politics, even playing it safe has risks."

But it's not just from one day to the next that the Times is inconsistent. Take the two front-page stories that run in today's Times about the selection of Mr. Cheney. They don't even agree on what Mr. Cheney was doing during the press conference. One article reports that Mr. Cheney "seemed to be trying to hide his grin. He often cast his eyes downward and could not decide what to do with his hands, which were alternately deep in his pockets or clasped modestly in front of him." The other article reports that "Mr. Cheney stood placidly next to Mr. Bush, his hands clasped in front of him." Which is it, fidgety or placid? Maybe the reason the Times ran both stories on the front page was to give its readers the choice of which account to believe.

(Neither article explains why what the vice presidential candidate does with his hands during the press conference is so important, anyway. Maybe it's old newsroom wisdom: As the reporters were headed out to the press conference, the editor barked, "Always watch what the vice presidential candidate does with his hands during a press conference. You never know when he might reach for a gun or try to pick the pocket of the presidential candidate." In the event, nothing so exciting happened, and the reporters had to make do with analyzing whether the veep candidate's hands were in "pockets" or "clasped.")

Another Choice: Another story where the Times this morning offers its readers a choice of accounts is President Clinton's comparison of the Camp David summit to a visit to the dentist. The front-page news story, which continues inside the paper, quotes the president as saying "This is like going to the dentist without have your gums deadened." Another story, on page A11 of New York editions, serves up the same quote with a slightly different verb structure: "a deeply frustrated Mr. Clinton compared the days of painstaking talks that ended in failure to 'going to the dentist without having your gums deadened.'"

Note, too, in that second rendition, the use by the Times of the word "failure" to describe the inability of the parties to reach an agreement on sharing Jerusalem. There may be plenty of Israelis and Palestinian Arabs who consider the lack of such a deal to be not a failure but a success, but the Times disagrees with them, as its editorial and its use of language in the news accounts make clear.

This morning's New York Times declares in a news story -- not an editorial, a news story -- that by selecting Richard Cheney as his running mate, Governor George W. Bush "made a risk-free and respectable choice."

Hello? Agree or disagree with the choice of Mr. Cheney, it is certainly not risk-free. Here are some of the more obvious risks:

Mr. Cheney had a student deferment and then a parent deferment from military service during the Vietnam War, according to Colin Powell's memoir "My American Journey." Since Governor Bush was in the Air National Guard, the Cheney choice sets up Vice President Gore, who was in Vietnam, to pick another Vietnam veteran as his running mate. Then the Democrats would be running two Vietnam vets against two Republicans who did not serve in Indochina.

Mr. Cheney is the chief executive of a big oil-related company, Halliburton, that does business in all sorts of dictatorships. Press reports last year said that the company was even trying to get approval to operate in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Does Governor Bush really want months of press stories in which reporters probe every deal Halliburton ever made in every two-bit desert country? Picking an energy company executive as running mate also makes it harder for Governor Bush to attack Mr. Gore for Mr. Gore's own ties to Occidental Petroleum.

Mr. Cheney was on a committee for an Arab charity event in Washington that invited virtually the entire diplomatic corps but excluded Israeli representatives. After the Jewish weekly the Forward reported on the event earlier this year, other members of the event committee, including Hillary Clinton and Senator Daschle, publicly distanced themselves from the charity event and its policy of excluding Israel. Mr. Cheney declined to do so. This may only reinforce doubts about the Bush ticket among Jewish voters who still remember President Bush's record of defying the pro-Israel lobby.

Mr. Cheney's personality lacks personal warmth, at least according to one account. Colin Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while Mr. Cheney was defense secretary, writes that "He and I had never, in nearly four years, spent a single purely social hour together." And when General Powell went up to Mr. Cheney's office to say goodbye at the end of the Bush admistration, General Powell found only Mr. Cheney's secretary standing among boxes. "I was disappointed, even hurt, but not surprised," General Powell wrote. "The lone cowboy had gone off into the sunset without even a last 'So long.'"

Finally, the one risk that even the Times has taken note of, which is Mr. Cheney's heart. He had a bypass operation in 1988. Those bypasses are usually good for about 10 years, which presents the risk that his ticker starts acting up mid-campaign.

All of this is not to suggest there is a better choice out there for Governor Bush than Mr. Cheney, or even that he wouldn't be a fine vice president. It is to suggest, however, that the Times might share some of the Cheney drawbacks with its readers before the selection is officially announced, and that the words "risk-free" be avoided when describing the pick. In politics, almost nothing is risk free.

Why is Vice President Gore lagging in the polls against Governor George W. Bush? Well, if you're The New York Times editorial page, the answer can't be because the voters favor Mr. Bush's larger tax cut. The answer can't be because voters are scared of, and disagree with, Mr. Gore's attacks on Big Oil and Big Pharmaceutical Companies and the internal combustion engine. The answer can't be because voters agree with Mr. Bush on the need for tort reform. The answer can't be because voters think Mr. Gore's fund-raising practices involving Buddhist monks have been a little too Clintonesque.

No, as the lead editorial of this morning's New York Times explains, what this election is about is not issues, but personality: "This election is destined to be remembered as a contest between an aspiring student-body president and an amiable slacker, to paraphrase an incisive description by The Times's Maureen Dowd." The editorial concludes: "The outcome may depend on whether the fervent Mr. Gore or the more laid-back Mr. Bush is better at making voters comfortable with personal images that are firmly and probably unalterably fixed in the public consciousness."

We somewhat doubt that if the polls shift and Mr. Gore wins this election, the Times editorial on the morning after the election will follow this same line. No, if that happens, the Gore victory will no doubt be interpreted as a mandate for smaller tax cuts, stricter environmental regulations and new price controls on innovative medicines. If Mr. Bush wins, however, watch for the Times to stick with its current analysis of the election as a personality contest.

Mm, Mm: The Times metro section this morning carries an article about the New York Post. The Times article quotes a headline over a Post column as asking "Just What Is It About a Phony Like Hillary That Makes Mm Skin Crawl?" We guess that headline in the Post probably said "My Skin," not "Mm Skin."

A lengthy obituary of Soviet spy Ruth Werner in this morning's New York Times displays a curious unwillingness to come to grips with the moral implications of spying for the Soviet Communist regime. It's similar to the flattering treatment the Times gave last month to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who also spied for the Soviets. Today's story is headlined "Ruth Werner, Colorful and Daring Soviet Spy, Dies at 93." The article describes her not only as colorful but also as "successful" -- suggesting the Times considers handing nuclear secrets over to the Soviets to constitute success. The rest of the article is pretty much a straightforward account of her exploits as a spy, including the fact of her being awarded a Red Banner, "the highest Soviet military decoration," in 1969. A sentence or two in this obituary of context about what the Soviet Union was doing internationally and to its own citizens during the period in which Werner was active would have gone a long way toward making clear that what this woman did was not only "colorful," "daring" and "successful," but that it was wrong.

Blunder in Brooklyn: Just days after misplacing the neighborhood of South Brooklyn, the Times is at it again, massacring the name of another place in the county of Kings. An article on page 23 of New York editions (I'm operating off the bulldog edition, which hits the streets Saturday night) refers to "Bayridge, Brooklyn." As Brooklynites know, that's Bay Ridge, two words, with the Ridge capitalized, please.

That's Lexis: This passage appears in an article on page 9 of the real estate section: "But he likens it to the way lawyers at his old firm of Baker & Botts reacted to the installation of Lexus terminals giving access to legal data. 'At first they were seen as a back-up to the books in the law library,' he said. 'Five years later it was reversed. I consulted the Lexus terminal while I was on the telephone with clients.'" The name of the online legal research service is Lexis; a Lexus has leather seats and is what the lawyers buy to drive around in with the profits they make from billing clients for the time spent in the office using Lexis.

The metro section of this morning's New York Times carries a dispatch from Park Slope, Brooklyn, on the battle between a landlord who wants to raise rents and a neighborhood group that wants to stop him.

To smartertimes.com, it seems as though the landlord is being entirely reasonable. The landlord is offering to pay moving expenses for his tenants who can't afford the rent increases, and he even set up one of the tenants in another apartment he owns that is rent-stabilized. The demand of the neighborhood group seems ridiculous: that the landlord "honor our racial and economic diversity" -- in effect, that the landlord subsidize the neighbors' desire to live in a racially and economically mixed neighborhood by forgoing the additional rent. If the neighborhood group feels so strongly about this principle, why doesn't it pay the landlord the difference between the market rent and what the tenants are currently paying? Why should the private landlord have to subsidize a tenant who earns only $19,000 a year but wants to live in an apartment whose market-rate rent is $1,000 a month? As the landlord is quoted as saying, he'd love to live on Park Avenue, but can't afford it, and you don't hear him whining. "This isn't Russia," the article quotes the landlord as saying.

The Times, however, makes clear where its sympathies lie in this fight. The landlord is described as "unrepentant" and "with sad, drooping eyes." The neighborhood group is described as "respected" and having "a proud record" and having "earnest young leaders." As if it weren't clear enough from these value-laden descriptions where the Times stands on this issue, the article -- a news story, not an editorial -- responds in its own voice to the landlord's remarks about Park Avenue and Russia by saying that the landlord "says these things as though they were self-evident truths. Yet in truth, little is self-evident about Park Slope's latest gentrification war."

Well, it seems pretty self-evident to us, if not to the Times. In the long run, market distortions of the kind this Times article advocates actually hurt cities and poor people. Landlords earning below-market rents end up letting their apartments deteriorate. There is little incentive for private investors to create or improve additional housing if they are not going to be allowed to charge a market rate for rent. Unused lots go vacant and are used as "community gardens" instead of as new apartment houses. Tenants are unlikely to make the transition to homeownership if they are getting such sweet deals on rent. The result is a kind of housing gridlock in which existing tenants are stuck in rental apartments that are cheap but in poor repair. Newcomers to the city, including immigrants who are probably more in need of cheap housing than long-term residents, end up paying exorbitant sums in rent for the few housing units that open up.

More Taxes: An editorial in today's Times calls for a tax increase on social security benefits. It's ridiculous that social security benefits are taxed at all, because the benefits are money that individual taxpayers pay into the system and then get back -- it would be like having to pay taxes on your tax refund. But for the Times to call for an increase in this tax at a moment when the federal government is projecting $3 trillion in surpluses, at a moment when the tax burden as a percentage of gross domestic product is the highest it has ever been in America during peacetime and at a moment when the New York Times Company itself is asking the city and state for a massive tax break for its new headquarters tower near Times Square -- well, that is just breathtaking.

This morning's New York Times carries two stories about farming that convey pretty much contradictory messages. They both appear on the front of the Metro section. The first runs under the headline "Wave of 'Eco-Terrorism' Appears to Hit Experimental Cornfield." The article uses terms like "sabotage" and "vandalism" to describe attempts by environmental activists to prevent the development of more productive agriculture. The second article runs under the headline "Paying to Keep Farmers Down on the Farm" and uses terms like "intriguing" and "an effective model" to describe attempts by environmental activists to prevent the development of more productive agriculture.

Part of the distinction, of course, is tactics -- the environmentalists in the first article are using guerilla raids to prevent new-fashioned farming, while the environmental activists in the second article are using financial subsidies to preserve old-fashioned farming. But the voice of the Times in the second article, which describes an effort by two conservation groups to pay to preserve farmland in Kinderhook, N.Y., seems to share some of the same assumptions of what the voice of the first article would describe as eco-terrorists -- the main assumption being that change is bad.

The second article ruefully reports, for instance, that "American farmland continues to be eroded by two potent forces: the bulldozers of developers and the less familiar tendency of rich suburbanites to annex prime growing fields to their rural retreats and take them out of production forever." Well, it's true that farmland is eroding -- from 1.17 billion acres in 1960 to 931 million acres in 1997, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But that's a pretty slow decline over a long period of time. And, as Bill McKibben wrote in his 1995 book "Hope, Human and Wild," much of that farmland, particularly in the Northeastern United States, has been replaced by forest, which is what was there before the farming started. Moreover, improvements in farming technology -- mechanized tractors, advanced pesticides and fertilizers -- have made it possible to grow more food on less land. No one is going hungry in America as a result of the erosion in the amount of farmland.

If the conservation groups in Kinderhook want to spend their money on keeping farms going that wouldn't otherwise be economically viable, that's their right. It's their money. But rather than glorifying the effort as "intriguing," the Times could have at least found someone to suggest that the groups may be engaged in an effort of Luddite nostalgia that's just a slight variation on the "eco-terrorism" of those who are uprooting experimental cornfields. Or maybe the Times could have found someone to suggest that the groups in Kinderhook may be doing more environmental damage by keeping a farm going that they would by letting the land revert to forest.

South Brooklyn: A short story on page B8 of the metro section of this morning's Times reports on a protest by parents, teachers and students who want the renewal of the contract of "a popular district superintendent in south Brooklyn." We learn a bit later in the story that the district "encompasses Coney Island, Seagate and Brighton Beach, and parts of Gravesend, Bensonhurst and Sheepshead Bay."

But wait a minute. While those neighborhoods may be in the southern part of Brooklyn if you look at a map, no one who knows much about Brooklyn would refer to them as "south Brooklyn." As the 1995 book "Brooklyn the Way It Was" makes clear, South Brooklyn is a neighborhood in Brooklyn that includes Smith Street and the area around the Gowanus Canal. That's miles away from the neighborhoods the Times is talking about when it uses the term "south Brooklyn."

When is a $490 million surplus described as a "deficit" or "budget woes"? When the newspaper is The New York Times, and the state is Texas, the home of the Republican presidential candidate, George W. Bush.

The Times makes this error twice today. The first time is a headline in the national news section: "Gore, Switching Campaign Plans, Heads for Texas to Focus on the State's Budget Woes." There are no "budget woes." As the article makes somewhat clear about midway through, state spending is going to be $610 million higher than a two-year old estimate, but state revenues are going to be $1.1 billion higher than the same two-year old estimate. That isn't "budget woes," it's a $490 million surplus.

The error is repeated on the op-ed page in an article by Larry Rockefeller. That article says "It's out of the mainstream -- and at odds with true Republican principles of fiscal responsibility -- to plunge back into deficit spending, as Governor Bush has in Texas with big tax cuts for the oil industry and others." Again, this is just plain false. There is no "deficit spending" in Texas. There's a surplus.

The Times admitted this in a correction it published in Saturday's paper. The correction, as it ran on July 15, said, "A headline yesterday about the Texas budget referred imprecisely to a $610 million shortfall. As the article reported, state spending will exceed the amount budgeted but will not exceed tax revenues; there is no deficit."

What's amazing is that even after printing that correction in Saturday's paper, the Times is continuing to repeat the falsehood, as it does in today's headline and op-ed piece.

Missing the Point on Jerusalem: A news story in this morning's New York Times includes the sentence: "The official position of the United States has been that the fate of Jerusalem must be negotiated between the parties." This may be technically true, but it leaves out a key fact. While it is true that the Clinton administration has presented this neutral view on Jerusalem, it is doing so in contravention of American law. The law in question is the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which passed the Senate by a vote of 93 to 5 and the House by a vote of 374 to 37, and which included the following text: "Statement of the Policy of the United States -- (1)Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected; (2)Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel." That is the official position of the United States, but you wouldn't know it from reading today's Times.

This morning's New York Times education page (B10 in New York editions) includes a column exploring the effects of higher federal education standards. If the federal standards on matters such as curriculum and student testing inspire increased spending on education at the state level, then "President Clinton will have been a visionary who maneuvered states into equalizing education after embracing high standards," the Times column says. The alternative is that Mr. Clinton was "reckless," inspiring states "to raise standards without resources to reach them" and "leading to wider academic gaps between rich and poor."

But this false choice is based on the false assumption of a link between spending on schools and performance of students. As the Times itself has pointed out in other recent articles, there's no such connection. For example, Washington D.C.'s level of per-pupil spending is relatively high compared to the national average, yet its schools perform poorly. Many Catholic schools have students that outperform those in public schools while spending less per pupil than the public schools do. And massive sums can be added to the budgets of school districts without it having much effect on student performance. The results depend partly on what the money is spent on, which can vary widely from school district to school district, as a Times article several weeks ago on spending in New York City reported.

It's quite possible -- though the Times article doesn't even consider the possibility -- that raising standards could help improve student performance even without additional money being spent on schools. The Times column, though, seems to judge the success of the standards policy not by whether it helps students learn more, but by whether it inspires more government spending on schools.

On top of all this is the demand for "equalizing" education. This is code for enforced mediocrity. The Times would rather have all schools be equally bad than having any school be better than any other. Imagine if the Times were to throw its editorial muscle behind "equalizing" restaurant meals in New York so that all dinners were exactly as good as all others. Besides putting its restaurant critic out of work, the policy would immediately be seen as ridiculous and un-American. More important than "equalization" in education is excellence and a minimum standard. Every American child should have a right to a decent education. But it would be a mistake to respond to the fact that some public schools are better than others by attempting to grind the better ones down to the minimum level.

Turn Off That Phone: An editorial in this morning's Times contains the following paragraph:

"A few small American municipalities, most recently Marlboro, N.J., have banned the use of hand-held cell phones by drivers. While the matter may require more research, our instinct is that Marlboro and the other communities are on the right track. We would go so far as to recommend state legislation to guarantee uniformity."

Well, why stop there? Why not a FEDERAL ban on hand-held cell-phone conversations while driving? And while we're at it, why not a federal law to ban drivers from talking to passengers in their cars while driving? And also a federal ban on looking at maps while driving. And a federal law to ban smoking while driving, or smoking while not driving, or eating fatty foods while driving. And a federal law to ban auto manufacturers from installing ashtrays or cup-holders in vehicles, which might encourage smoking or coffee-drinking while driving, which might distract drivers' full attention from the road. The Times' "instinct" is probably to support all these laws that try to protect individuals from their own behavior but that take the fun out of life and expand the role of the government.