Why did the New York Times send a reporter to talk to 36 people in order to find out if Barack Obama was a big scary drug addict? (“Old Friends Say Drugs Played Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life,” says today’s page A1.)

The really striking thing about the piece was: nobody would play along with the game. Obama must be a good guy.

The paragraph with the “tell” in it was this one: “In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates, and mentors form his high school and Occidental recalled Mr. Obama as being grounded, motivated and poised, someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug problems and seemed to dabble only with marijuana.”

That’s the sound of a reporter saying, I tried boss, I really tried! You told me to go after the drugs, but it just isn’t there!

Obama has already been open about his drug use as a teenager and college student (and who in this generation hasn’t experimented with drugs at some point? He would be completely out of the mainstream if he hadn’t). He was open about it as a way to exhort young black men, and others, *not* to do drugs.

But that wasn’t good enough for the Times. “Mr. Obama, of Illinois,” said the piece, by Serge F. Kovaleski, “has never quantified his illicit drug use or provided many details.” Oh, I see. It would only be counted as honesty if Obama had said: Well, I smoked 12 joints, 3 roaches, 7 bowls…”

Mr. Kovaleski: Do you remember what you had for lunch last Thursday?

And although friend after friend who knew-Obama-when maintains that this young man was all about intellect, social responsibility and ideas—not drugs—the Times winds up with the headline “Old Friends Say Drugs Played Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life"—in the affirmative. It would have been more representative of what Obama’s friends actually say to put it in the negative: “Old Friends Say Drugs Played No Part in Obama’s Young Life.”

The Times got nothing. Not one person to talk about Obama the reefer addict. And yet, they managed to package it on their front page as if they did, complete with this suggestive sentence in the opening paragraph: “Mr. Obama, then known as Barry, also joined in the party scene.” It makes him sound like a perp!

But why hasn't the Times ever written about how President Bush-the-reformed-alcoholic still enjoys a drink now and then?—at least according to some reporters I talked to in Texas who say their editors have no interest in printing how they've seen the president with a bottle of beer.