Like the legendary people who have lived beneath a roaring waterfall for so long that they can no longer hear it, media folk are by now so much accustomed to “spin,” the language that they themselves have forced politicians to speak, that they can no longer hear it. Thus as Tim Russert interviewed Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, on a recent Sunday morning on “Meet the Press,” he pointed out to him that every one of the latter’s predictions of Democratic victories in 2002 had turned out to be erroneous. Why then should we believe his sanguine picture of Democratic prospects in 2004? Here is what McAuliffe replied: “I am the national party chairman. I am not going to go on television, you know, three days before an election and say, ‘Oh, no, Tim. No, Mr. Russert, we’re not going to win these elections.’ My job is the chief cheerleader of the party. We’re going to win everything. That’s my job.”

There is an almost endearing quality to such unexpected honesty. Or there would be if it were not so shocking. As when someone candidly confesses that he has lied, our first thought is of the paradox: if you say you lied then, how do we know you’re not lying now? In effect, McAuliffe was telling us that he waslying now—or at least that truth is no part of the concern of “the chief cheerleader of the party,” which comes to pretty