March 8 - Two of President Bush's new campaign ads include footage from the destroyed World Trade Center. You probably haven't even seen these ads yet--in fact, you may never see them unless you watch cable news regularly or live in a battleground state and  tune in to television shows that political consultants believe are widely watched by swing voters--but you've certainly heard the debate about them.

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The issue of whether the president's new ads "politicize" the worst terror attack in our history consumed the media last week. But re-reading the way this "story" was covered by the media offers yet another example of how the media doesn't know how to cover a story.

"President Bush's first re-election commercials are drawing heat from Democrats, firefighters and some survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks, who say the Republican president is using the tragedy for political gain," wrote the Cleveland Plain Dealer (similar wording was flashed on the front pages all over the country). Reading that opening sentence might trick you into thinking that an important news story was forthcoming--except that there's no news here at all. In fact, the article admits it right away: It's the president's commercials that are "drawing heat" rather than the president's leadership or lack thereof.

In one ad, the president says we are "safer" and "stronger." We may be, we may not be. But we're not even discussing that issue; instead, we're wasting valuable brain cells debating whether a split-second clip of a destroyed building--one not even recognizable as the World Trade Center--is too political.

And that's why this opening salvo of the campaign has been such a victory for the forces of cynicism that run the president's campaign. They didn't create ads hoping to open a debate on the president's performance. They created ads hoping that a 1.5-second clip of a wrecked building would open a debate about the ads. That allows the president to appear above this substance-free fray. "How this administration handled that day, as well as the war on terror, is worthy of discussion,'' Bush said on Saturday. "And I look forward to the debate about who best to lead this country in the war on terror." He may indeed look forward to that debate, but it is precisely that debate that we will never have.

In the end, those 1.5 seconds may end up saving the president hours of time that he might otherwise be forced to spend actually defending the administration for the failures that led up to Sept. 11--yes, lest we forget, President Bush was President Bush on 9/11--and for its policies afterwards.

Nothing new here, of course. Last year, the president floated a new policy that would allow millions of illegal aliens to work legally, but we never even got a debate about the proposal before it got bogged down under charges that the president was merely "courting the Hispanic vote" or giving a "payback" to cheap-labor-addicted "Big Business." And then the president was able to go around the country and not talk about the proposal, but instead rail against the "special interests" who were trying to kill it.

The result is an electorate sitting around thinking, "Damn those special interests. President Bush is a real leader," rather than, "Hmm, I wonder what's in that proposal that makes so many people question it."

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Funny thing is, the Bush ads actually don't exploit 9/11 at all. Even though I consider myself a proud New Yorker--one of eight million who still see picturesaround the city every day of the Twin Towers  that no longer exist --I wasn't offended by the footage. Instead, I was offended by how empty the ads are, how they rely entirely on platitudes ("Rising to the challenge") rather than policy. Both of the so-called controversial ads end with the treacly, "President Bush: Steady leadership in times of change." (And I was most offended that Laura Bush's only line in the commercials is a sentence fragment. Some librarian she turned out to be.)

I'm not naïve. I understand that political ads rarely do anything except cast the candidate in a good light (remember, even Jimmy Carter's ads made you scratch your head and say, "You know, he really hasn't been doing such a bad job."). My problem is not Karl Rove's marketing of the president, but with the media's inability to see through it. The more news stories you read, the more you'll see how coverage of actual issues have been subsumed by commentary on coverage of those issues.

Indeed, the other day, presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry hoped to make news by condemning President Bush's failure to support the democratically elected government of Haiti as he was being deposed by paramilitary thugs (you might have read something about this in the papers; then again, given the state of the media, you might not have). In the context of the president's stated support for democracy in the Middle East (the fallback position after we failed to find those pesky WMDs), Kerry's criticism of Bush's Haiti policy comprised a legitimate attack on an actual piece of American foreign policy.

Of course, that's not how it played out in the newspapers and the news channels the next day. The much-vaunted New York Times barely acknowledged the substance of Kerry's attack, instead focusing its story on how Kerry's critique was "emblematic of how he is already using foreign policy and national security issues in his contest with the president." In fact, the article went on at great length about how Kerry's positions will "play out" on the campaign trail--as if his and President Bush's actual views are irrelevant and all that matters is how they deliver the speech.

Indeed, as the Times--which, one would think, is inclined to treat Kerry fairly--put it, "When pressed for details, Mr. Kerry can veer into the dry, Latin-heavy jargon of policy journals." In other words, he's a thoughtful, learned leader who would prefer not to campaign via sound-bites. Why does the fact that a candidate gives long, well-thought-out answers absolve the media from actually having to print and analyze them?

This is not, of course, limited to the political arena. Our media is notorious for missing the forest of root causes because all the trees of flashy expediency are in the way. That explains why we have weeklong debates about how a 1.5-second flash of Janet Jackson's breast shows that our society's moral fiber has collapsed, yet we never actually debate that a culture where pornography is one of the biggest selling products might actually want it that way. And in the debate over gay marriage, we get lots of noise about how our society will further degrade if gays are allowed to wed, but we're quick to ignore that virtually all of the cultural forces that are supposedly degrading our society--whether it's the mindless violence of video games, the sexualizing of our pre-teens or the corrosive bile of Eminem--is solely the creation of heterosexuals for heterosexuals. You could win a debate by arguing that the problem with our society is straight people, not gay people. Of course, that's another debate we never have.

So do yourself a favor this campaign season. Don't look for the 1.5-second flash of the destroyed World Trade Center. Look for what's being hidden behind it.

Gersh Kuntzman is also Brooklyn bureau chief for The New York Post. His website is at http://www.gersh.tv/

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