Recent commentary from National Journal: Legal Affairs: Cabbies, Cops, Pizza Deliveries, and Racial Profiling, by Stuart Taylor Jr. (June 20, 2000) Racial profiling by police is not worth the costs. Racial profiling by cabbies is another matter. Political Pulse: High-Tech Queries, Slow-Mo Answers, by William Schneider (June 20, 2000) Things have changed a lot since Al Gore invented the Internet. Political Pulse: Growing Doubts About the Death Penalty, by William Schneider (June 14, 2000) Suddenly, the politics of capital punishment appears to be changing. Media: Drama Club, by William Powers (June 14, 2000) In New York, the media's tried-and-true script provides plenty of hisses and cheers for Hillary and Rick. Social Studies: The Microsoft Case -- Fair, Necessary, and Totally Random, by Jonathan Rauch (June 14, 2000) Let's be clear with ourselves about what the law is doing in the Microsoft case: whistling in the dark. More from National Journal. Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte.

Media: The Signed-On Majority Think those political Web sites will help you form your decision about the next President? Think again by William Powers June 20, 2000 Normally you wouldn't be paying much attention, not this early in the game. Who has time? Past years, you'd never give it a thought until maybe October. The World Series would end, and that was your signal to start thinking about the next President. Watch a few debates, read the papers a little more, ponder it on the interstate. Pick your guy. But this time around, there's a twist. You've got your new computer, a fast one with good speakers that you bought on the phone for under a thousand. You're having a ball with it, signing on every night, buying stuff -- tomato seeds! A Civil War book! New sandals! You're even sending e-mails to your mom down in Vero Beach. She's on this campaign like a fiend, of course, has C-SPAN on all day and she's blabbing about George W. this and Gore that, till you're about to scream. Anyway, the other day you're in the kitchen opening a can of tuna, and some news show is on and that real thin woman with blond hair -- the one who asks the questions in the debates -- is saying something interesting. "Well," she says, "according to the Pew survey, financial news is driving Americans to the Web, but there is also a huge potential audience for political coverage. Another poll by the American University Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies shows 19 percent of Americans view the Internet as a very important source for political information. Another 32 percent say it is somewhat important. Taken together, that is a majority." Political information? You hadn't even thought of that. Later, after the kids have gone down, you're in the den signed on, and you go over to Google, the search engine Angela down at the office says is the best by far, because it got her going on that family tree project she won't shut up about. You type in "George W. Bush." "Google results 1-10 of about 89,799 hits," it says. Whoa. The first one is Bush's "official home page," which sounds good. It starts to load, and after a few seconds one of those annoying little boxes pops open in the upper left. It has a picture of George W. and his wife, what's-her-name, and directly under their chins, in maroon capital letters, the words, CONTRIBUTE NOW. You don't think so. Next to this offensive command is a short text: "I am a reformer with results. Of the major candidates, I'm the only one who does not have a D.C. ZIP code. I come from outside the system ..." Excuse me? You're in this race because your daddy spent four years running the world from the D.C. ZIP code, and now you're from outside the system? This must be your special Web site for knuckleheads. The page itself has something about Bush proposing to make government "more citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based," and a photo of a good-looking kid named George P. Bush (another one?) who looks like a cross between Pete Sampras and the Vida Loca boy, and it seems he's done "two new Hispanic outreach ads in both Spanish and English." Fine, but you can't focus on it. Everything's been tainted by that ZIP code crock, and you want out. You type in "Al Gore." At his official site, the headline is "Gore Would Help Protect Personal Privacy by Prohibiting the Sale of Social Security Numbers." This doesn't strike you as a supertough call. Next item: "Gore Would Help Families and Friends Meet Long-Term Care Needs of Loved Ones." Just keep C-SPAN hooked up to Vero Beach and we're all set, OK? You click around and damned if the word "family" doesn't keep showing up, like in every other line. There's even a whole page on "the Gore Family," and it's weird how all the females look like Diane Sawyer. So he's got a family, you think, big whoop. Now where's his proposal to protect political kids from exploitation by their fathers? Away you go. To a site where photos of the candidates' heads dance around idiotically to funny music. To an archive of "stupid quotes and lies by Al Gore," and a page "proving" that George W. is the Antichrist. You save all three as favorites. You find a site called Issues2000.org, which has a long, impressive list of where these guys stand on everything from A (abortion) to W (welfare). You save this, too, and maybe you'll have time to read it next fall. But then the "issues" aren't really the point for you, not in these times. The other day, you heard a radio report about how a possible Teamsters strike "might lead to summer soft-drink shortages." Such are our national struggles. No, for you it always comes down, in the end, to: who do you like? Carter seemed more likable than Ford. And Reagan more than Carter. And Bush more than Dukakis. And Clinton more than Bush. (Funny, isn't it, how your guy always wins?) The media don't get this, of course, don't see that it's all about likability -- which is all about trust. That would be too simple for them, too personality-driven. But an issue doesn't declare war on another country. An issue doesn't do something sleazy on the job, then lie to your face about it. People do those things. And you haven't yet found a Web site that exposes what these guys are really made of. But you'll keep looking. You never know what they'll come up with next. What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. All material copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.