Got Advice? The Dean Double Standard

So I do my usual first-thing-in-the-morning news troll through the Net (after the cold cereal and the coffee, of course), and I find a mountain of negative articles on Dean. Just as they did with Gore, the media seems determined to exaggerate out of all proportion every tiny little mistake, every distant, pale intimation of a possible conflict of interest on the part of a low-level, long-dead aide, every ripped-out-of-context quotation.

Here's today's round-up:
The NYT editorial board continues its long tradition of holding Democrats to far higher standards than Republicans, demanding that Dean open up all his gubernatorial files, despite the fact that sealing a certain amount of files is perfectly routine (a fact unmentioned by the editorial) and the fact that Bush's penchant for secrecy goes way, way beyond Dean's.

On the general subject of "gaffes," we have David Broder, who pontificates about the potential for utter destruction in Dean's many alleged misstatements: "It is hard to recall another challenger who . . . has so thoroughly demonstrated a penchant for embarrassing himself." And Dean is "accident-prone."

On the specific subject of Dean's error in saying that the Book of Job was in the New Testament, we have both Nick Kristof in the Times and Mike Littwin in the Rocky Mountain News. Though Littwin is generally positive about Dean, he can't resist saying of this particular mistake "You can turn off the gaffe-meter. We have a winner." Ha ha, Mike!

The problem with all this nit-picking is that, like the alleged conflict-of-interest scandalette and the secret files, Dean's "gaffes" are a whole lot of nothing, especially in comparison to Bush. Why is it that Shrub can get away with saying, in May 2003, that we'd found WMD in Iraq? In October that one of his biggest accomplishments of the year was ridding Iraq of WMD? To say nothing of all the lies leading up to the war.

And certainly, by any rational standard, such comments by Bush are far, far worse than Dean's errors. Bush's comments display either complete delusion or a willingness to lie brazenly. They are not mistakes. They are something much more troubling. Yet the media ignores them.

So, the media has every intention of "Goring" Dean this year. What to do about it? I have no idea, really, but maybe you have some suggestions.