The conspiracy

WORLD has been trying to raise its profile in Washington, D.C. With our Feb. 19 issue we succeeded, although some of the publicity was not entirely desirable.

WORLD signed a contract in January to have issues distributed by messenger each Monday morning for 40 straight weeks to the offices of the capital's media and political bigshots. Our Super Bowl cover story was the first to be sent around, but the Washington press corps did not pay attention because the Washington Redskins were not in the game. Our "McCain craze" cover was the second, and it raised a ruckus.

New York Times veteran columnist William Safire, a McCain fan, read our story. He apparently had never seen WORLD before and was evidently unaware of our tendency to bring up subjects-in this case, the McCain downside-that the liberal press ignores.

Mr. Safire examined our masthead and saw two names that further infuriated him: Bob Jones IV and Marvin Olasky. He correctly identified Bob as the son of Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University. My name also bothered columnist Safire because he saw me as (to quote his colorful words) "the revered intellectual guru of Bush and an author of 'compassionate conservatism.'" For Mr. Safire, everything clicked into place.

He wrote a column suggesting that the sudden (to him) appearance of WORLD showed that a vast right-wing Bush/WORLD/Bob Jones conspiracy was making mischief. Since The New York Times is influential and the Safire column is syndicated, his paranoia gained a broad audience and WORLD suddenly had new enemies (and also new fans).

Ironically, just the week before Mr. Safire had written a column about Hillary Clinton's conspiracy fears and noted, "Vast-conspiracy theorists need not be encumbered by facts." Here are five facts that did not encumber Mr. Safire:

Are his complaints about our hard-hitting coverage valid? The Bible tells us to look at the whole person and not just go by words. Last year I came out with a book, The American Leadership Tradition, that showed the importance of personal lives and beliefs to successful presidencies.

And listen to this poignant cry offered by journalist Chris Matthews two years ago on his CNBC show, Hardball: "We, 49 percent of us at least, bought this box of cereal called Bill Clinton. Inside some of us expected to find, perhaps, one of those little plastic toys slipped in between the box and the wax paper. Instead, we opened the box one winter day this year to find not a harmless novelty item, but a spider, an eight-legged hairy bug crawling in what we expected to be a hearty January breakfast. We now have to live with it, including those of us who were so hungry for leadership in this aging century that we heard and discounted back when we had the choice . . . that tell-tale scratching in the box."

John McCain is no Bill Clinton. But journalists should be the eyes and ears of voters. If they fall in love with a candidate and adopt a policy of see, hear, and speak no evil, we recognize tell-tale scratching only when it is too late.