It's only dirty pool if you lose.

That's the apparent Democratic approach to presidential politics. In 2004, Democrats tried to use film, in the form of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 , to discredit and bring down President Bush in his re-election effort. CBS even got into the fray, using obviously forged documents to try to tarnish Bush's National Guard service. It led to news anchor Dan Rather's retirement.

Yet, four years after a group of veterans from Democratic nominee John Kerry's "swift boat" days in Vietnam hit the news media with their concerns about his war record, it was considered by Democrats and their lackey media to be dirty pool. For the mainstream media now, "swift-boating" has become a verb that describes underhanded politics.

What was underhanded about it? Didn't the veterans opposed to Kerry have an absolute right to express their reservations, and to share their own recollections of Kerry's actual war experience?

Now, Democrats want to cry "swift-boating" because of new books that explore Democratic nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama's past and his record.

They want to paint the books -- particularly The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality -- as smear jobs. As "swift-boating."

Well, first of all, we've never regarded the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth as underhanded. They opposed Kerry forthrightly and said why. We think it's a smear job, on the other hand, to use "swift-boating" as a term for dirty politics. But the mainstream media accept it as gospel.

Secondly, the mainstream media have had no taste for exploring Obama's background whatsoever. They are in the tank for Obama, and don't want anything to come out that might lessen his chances of winning. So their objections to others who investigate Obama ring hollow. The book authors are doing what the network news divisions should have done.

And, oh by the way, Obama Nation is No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. So it's not as if the news media can claim the public isn't dying to learn more about Obama. They seem determined not to deliver it -- or to let anyone else deliver it.

Kerry himself has launched a Web site called "Truth Fights Back" to try to discredit claims in the Obama Nation book. Great! This is a debate that needed to happen. Let the facts fall where they may. But at least get them out there.