I get campaign e-mails from all three presidential campaigns -- whoops, I mean two, since hell hath indeed frozen over -- and have noticed a striking tendency. The PR wizards love attacking journalists as much as they do opponents. My explanation? The tempation to do so is just too great to ignore. It's far easier to score quick points doing that than it is to confront negative coverage. But that question begs another: Why is the elaborate dance between the covering and the covered set up that way? Can't the relationship be based on mutual respect -- in the model of JFK, who respected reporters' intellect and valued their craft?

I'm not entirely sure why journalists are everyone's favorite whipping boys -- and not just in politics. Print is no longer king and never will be again, and there are more sources of news and analysis out there than ever (insert Bright Hall plug) but it's hard to see how that alone spawns incredible mistrust and anger at the traditional media, some based on reality, some not.
But the absolute worst symptom of media-hatred syndrome has to be the self-serving calls for journalists to cover political issues more substantively. It's a handy tool, because invoking a journalist's supposed "duty" to inform the public seems reasonable enough. When a candidate -- or, more likely, a surrogate -- pines for coverage of policy proposals (specifically, theirs), and less gotcha stories (specifically, about them), who's going to argue? Not the news outlets themselves, lest they be accused of making the story about them, and certainly not rival candidates, unless they have a political death wish. Result: It's infinitely easier to bash a story's writers for supposedly ignoring substance than to fight the story itself.

Example: Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of the senator and former presidential candidate, took the news media to task in utterly stereotypical fashion in late April for prizing personality over substance. For good measure, she threw in the sanctimonious command of "Do your job" (!) to conclude.

That makes for an easy column, but I would argue that asking print, cable news, magazines and the like to evaluate policy and be a one-stop shop for answers is a terrible idea, not least for the whining candidates (and their wives).

There's a reason why controversial issues create controversy: Both sides have plausible arguments, and it is often hard to reach any conclusions that aren't tainted by partisanship. Everyone knows the U.S. health care landscape needs fixing, but no one knows for sure how to reform it. How much should we cut taxes without causing inflation? How about approaches for fighting crime, or even teenage pregnancy, or, well, take your pick? No easy answers in sight, and the more wonkish the issue, the more intractable the problem becomes. As a reporter myself, the last person I would trust with the task of deciphering those complex issues is someone like me. Pages upon pages of research produced by Ph.D's are not enough to answer these questions, so why is a 30-inch weekender suddenly the answer? Are Mrs. Edwards and her ilk really ready to entrust deadline-stricken reporters with that kind of responsibility?

I suspect, deep down, they don't. The better option is to stop expecting the impossible. Let the politicians make the topical arguments, if they indeed want to talk about substance so badly. If that doesn't happen (hint hint -- it won't), voters will keep choosing candidates because of values and character more than policies and ideas. And that's fine. Democracy was never meant to be perfect anyway, just the least-worst option.