In this climate, it was only sensible that newspaper editors and television producers would go out of their way to make sure that the prominent architects, adherents, and enablers of the Bush/Rove governing philosophy were represented on op-ed pages, in news reports and on opinion-shaping discussion shows. Theirs was the dominant political philosophy, and one that wouldn't be fading anytime soon. Best for their voices to be heard.

Of course, the folly of the "permanent majority" forecast, which should have been fairly clear even in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Bush's reelection, became evident less than a year after the '04 vote, when rising violence in Iraq and the horrors of Hurricane Katrina sent support for the president and his party plummeting. Two straight electoral blood-lettings for the G.O.P. followed, and now Democrats dominate Washington like they haven't in decades.

And yet, months after Mr. Bush took his Madoff-level popularity and exited the White House, his loyalists are still routinely called upon by influential media to represent the "conservative" perspective—bestowing unwarranted legitimacy on them and guaranteeing an unsatisfying experience for viewers who might be interested in hearing an intelligent conservative perspective, not a mindless rehash of the slogans Mr. Bush spouted to increasingly ill effect over eight years.

This unfortunate phenomenon reared its head over the weekend on Meet the Press, which convened a discussion with three essentially nonpartisan journalists and two men with more clearly defined ideological views. From the left, there was William Rodgers, once the chief economist for Bill Clinton's Labor Department. And from the right, there was Michael Gerson, the former Bush speechwriter who is credited with coining the phrase "axis of evil" and coming up with perhaps the single most important line to sell the Iraq war—that "the first sign of a smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud."

If you missed the show, you'll be happy to know that Mr. Gerson, who regularly provides "conservative" perspective for The Washington Post's op-ed page, is still at it. His most significant contribution to the panel came when he complained about the new administration's decision to stop using the "war on terror" phraseology in which Mr. Gerson so eagerly trafficked.

"We've pursued a strategy against Al Qaeda that assumed we were at war that's been fairly successful since 9/11," the ex-speechwriter said. "And so calling something an overseas contingency operation, which really sounds like you're looking for lost luggage, doesn't necessarily, you know, move this debate forward."

Maybe this would have passed for "balance" back in, say, 2005, but exactly whom does Mr. Gerson represent anymore? Iraq, at least in theory, destroyed his credibility with the general public. And while conservatives generally remained loyal to Mr. Bush while he was president, the ever-increasing denunciations of his policies from the right since he left office have made clear that the Bush philosophy—unilateral interventionism overseas with little regard for the G.O.P.'s traditional emphasis on small government—was never really representative of his party's grass roots; they simply stuck with him because he was their president and the Democrats hated him.

Nor is Mr. Gerson the only conservative to emerge, after hitching his wagon to the Bush administration's star, as a supposed representative of current conservative thought.

Turn on CNN and chances are you won't have to wait long to see the face of Stephen Hayes, who distinguished himself earlier this decade for his insistence, long after it was clear that the opposite was true, that "there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to plot against Americans." He also penned a fawning biography of Dick Cheney.

Or pick up The Washington Post, the same paper that gave Mr. Gerson his post-Bush home, and you'll find a regular op-ed column from William Kristol, the tireless Iraq war champion whose offerings, worse than being wrong, are usually unreadable; Or there's Ron Christie, a little-known Bush and Cheney aide who has somehow become one of the cable networks' go-to guys for the conservative viewpoint—which he unfailingly expresses with the language his old bosses favored when they were in power.

All of these people, of course, are entitled to their views. But, besides outdated and discredited bluster, they add nothing to the current discussion. And there are plenty of intelligent conservatives out there who aren't interested in just defending the last administration (and, by extension, themselves) and who offer fresh, thought-provoking and often unpredictable perspectives.

A good example is Ross Douthat, who's been writing for The Atlantic. His instincts are conservative, but he is far more loyal to critical thinking than partisan rhetoric—something he demonstrated in an appearance on Hardball in 2007, when he unexpectedly confronted Republican Representative Marsha Blackburn, who was mouthing a series of meaningless platitudes about Fred Thompson.

When Mr. Kristol's one-year Op-Ed contract with The New York Times ended earlier this year, the paper chose as his successor Mr. Douthat. That's the kind of upgrade that other media outlets would do well to emulate.

UPDATE: For more information on the question of who coined "Axis of Evil," see here.

From the very start of his column last year, Mr. Kristol drew criticism from writers like The Atlantic's James Fallows, who wrote of Mr. Kristol's debut on January 7th, 2008:

More recently, The New Yorker's George Packer wrote on November 17th, 2008:

That same month, Mr. Kristol told The Observer that writing for The Times, "I've had zero problems, issues … It's been low drama. Despite all the dramatics in the blogosphere, it's been a very undramatic experience for me."

The room was quickly filling up with eager young journalists, spiral notepads blank and at the ready, digital recorders checked once, twice, and stomachs empty and open. (The invitation called for noon-2:30 p.m. and specified "Lunch will be served." With Time's Person of the Year luncheon last week and Tina Brown and Barry Diller's The Daily Beast celebrating its first 1,000 hours in the Meatpacking District tonight, a semi-employed journalist can at least still get a decent meal in this town.)

Asked what he'd be talking about, Mr. Kristol smiled. "I don't know. I'll answer whatever questions they ask." When asked if the panel's organizers had offered him any specific parameters, he shrugged. "Media? New media?"

Mr. Kristol explained his take on new media, "I'm friendly to it... I'm sort of a defender of the internet, basically. And the blogosphere." Mr. Kristol, who writes a weekly column for The New York Times, edits The Weekly Standard (owned by Rupert Murdoch), and appears frequently as a guest on cable news programs and Sunday morning current events shows, continued, "I'm not such a fan of the mainstream media." Standing a few feet away at Michael's—which The Observer's Chris Shott noted in October is almost always filled with "various media professionals"—was Arianna Huffington (who'd hosted THe Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC last night) surrounded by a small crowd.

A lot of people have been talking about Mr. Kristol's Times column lately. Ms. Huffington's own Web site featured a piece earlier this month by Nora Ephron headlined Thinking About Bill, in which she wrote:

That same week, Newser's Michael Wolff wrote, "The Times, which hired Kristol opportunistically when it thought it could get some advantage from a party line conservative (and when it was trying to defend itself from Fox News' attacks), is surely looking at his contract terms," which prompted Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici to post a poll asking With whom should the Times replace Bill Kristol?.

Did the criticism hurt his feeling? "A lot of people have been very nice about my columns. I dunno."

Was his contract with The Times going to be renewed? "I dunno. You gotta talk to them about that. It's been a lot of work and I'm kinda stretched a little thin. I'll see." (A call to The New York Times' Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal has not yet been returned.) "You guys are all—well, I don't know you—but everyone's obsessed with this internal New York Times..." Mr. Kristol stopped himself short.

"I've had zero problems, issues... It's been low drama. Despite all the dramatics in the blogosphere it's been a very undramatic experience for me."

His life in Op-Ed may be mellow, but what did Mr. Kristol think of the recent story by The Times' Elisabeth Bumiller, Internal Battles Divided McCain and Palin Camps, in which Mr. Kristol—a vehement defender of Ms. Palin (he told colleague Maureen Dowd the Governor "was like Andrew Jackson"!)—appeared as a possible recipient of intra-McCain-Palin camp leaks?

"It was a little weird," Mr. Kristol conceded. "Look, they called and I said I don't wanna talk about it. But they said, 'Look, some of the McCain people said you were the recipient of these leaks so you need to address it.' I addressed it. It's fine. You can't help it if you're part of the story. I didn't try to get in it. But you gotta answer a question for a reporter." (Media Mob couldn't disagree at the moment.)

Did he feel his own paper had thrown him under the bus? "You know how that works. I don't think Elisabeth Bumiller coordinates—I know she doesn't—with Andy Rosenthal, so I mean, she's reporting the story and someone says [Randy] Scheunemann was leaking to Kristol—god forbid. As if anyone on a campaign shouldn't talk to a columnist or a reporter."

"Or to a friend," Mr. Kristol added.

Speaking of friends, Mr. Kristol said he'd seen the Jacksonian Governor Palin at last week's Republican Governor's Association conference in Florida (the subject of his latest Times column) and he wanted to clarify something. "I met her for the second time in my life. I know we're supposed to be such great friends, but the truth is I've met her twice... I've spoken to her on the phone once. For all our great closeness"—perhaps Mr. Kristol was referring to Jane Mayer's report in The New Yorker about his and other Standard editors' visit to the Alaska Governor in June 2007— "I barely know her."

Did Governor Palin—who famously told CBS News' Katie Couric she reads "a vast variety of sources"—read his columns about her? "She didn't say one way or the other. We had a casual, social conversation."

Did the Governor at least thank him for being one of her biggest defenders? "It's not a matter of 'thanks.'" Mr. Kristol said. "I just called it the way I saw it."

"She just, I guess..." He trailed off for a moment. "She didn't say one thing one way or the other, honestly."

The New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller has an A1-promoted story headlined Internal Battles Divided McCain and Palin Camps, in which she reveals all about the Republican candidates' failed bid for the White House. This comes a day after Newsweek broke new ground on the Governor's campaign trail spending spree and Carl Cameron told FOX News (FOX News!) that the woman New York Times columnist Bill Kristol favorably compared to Andrew Jackson didn't know what countries were in NAFTA or that Africa is a continent. (This clip comes via Andrew Sullivan.)

Ms. Bumiller's Times article has some details about the McCain and Palin teams' relationships with her colleague, Mr. Kristol, but here's an interesting section about Governor Palin's disastrous interview with CBS Evening News' Katie Couric in September:

There's also a bit about how the Governor found herself on the receiving end of a prank phone call by Canadian radio hosts claiming to be French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr. Kristol mostly just laughed at his own jokes and squeaked, but he did have a semi-serious point to make about this highly contentious campaign: "It's not a psychodrama; it's just an election." (Just an election. Don't we all feel silly now.)

The editor and columnist maintained that on Election Day there will be an "upset" and that Republican nominee John McCain and Governor Palin will "win huge." (The audience loved that.) Mr. Stewart called that outcome "heartbreaking"; Mr. Kristol countered that it would be "inspiring."

Strangely, Mr. Kristol managed to take a shot at his own paper, telling his host, "You're reading The New York Times too much, Jon." As Mr. Stewart attempted to point out that Mr. Kristol sort of writes for that paper, his guest cut in, "Oh, it's a very fine newspaper." Adding, "On one day of the week."

The piece is a little dated—references to John Sununu and the invasion of Panama are unlikely to ring bells with younger readers—but it definitely sheds some light on Mr. Kristol, who is now a New York Times columnist who writes spectacularly pro-Sarah Palin columns for the paper and shows his fondness for the Republican vice presidential nominee in his magazine, The Weekly Standard, and during TV appearances.

Here's what Mr. Weisberg wrote back in 1990:

This time around, the public seems to have been first level, with the Republican Party holding steady at second. (The White House is entirely dependent on voters.) As Mr. Kristol wrote in The Times on September 7th with Governor Palin's Republican National Convention speech fresh in his mind, "A Wasilla Wal-Mart Mom a heartbeat away? I suspect most voters will say, No problem. And some — perhaps a decisive number — will say, It’s about time."

Then there's this:

That neatly echoes what Mr. Kristol thought about Governor Palin on October 6th when he wrote, "As for the campaign, Palin made clear — without being willing to flat out say so — that she regretted allowing herself to be overly handled and constrained after the Republican convention. She described the debate on Thursday night as 'liberating,' and she emphasized how much she now looked forward to being out there, 'getting to speak directly to the folks.'"

In his tee-up to Mr. Weisberg's archival piece, Mr. Orr wrote, "there's little reason to imagine that Kristol would want to give up any of his lucrative media gigs. But if you believe the people Scott Horton has been talking to, he sees Palin as a blank slate, a charismatic but unformed political figure who could be an effective messenger for the tenets of neoconservatism, just as soon as she's been taught them. "

Will Mr. Kristol get a chance to be another vice president's brain? That depends on whether voters recall the words of Mr. Kristol's original vessel who once said of... well, something,"The question is whether we're gonna go forward to tomorrow, or past to the back?"

Ms. Noonan, of course, knows from vulgarity when it comes to Governor Palin, but Mr. Kristol dismisses his sister-in-arms with the following: "Leave aside Noonan’s negative judgment on Sarah Palin’s candidacy, a judgment I don’t share."

To say Mr. Kristol, who was once famously dubbed Dan Quayle's "brain", doesn't share criticism of Governor Palin is an understatement. If anything, Mr. Kristol is Governor Palin's number one fan, using his Times column, his magazine, The Weekly Standard, and his various appearances on TV and in other people's articles (including his colleague Maureen Dowd's October 14th column in which he compared the governor to Andrew Jackson) to cheer for his favorite candidate for the second most important job in the world.

But how did Mr. Kristol's fascination with Governor Palin begin? This week in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer explains all.

Apparently during a Weekly Standard-sponsored cruise to Alaska in 2007, Mr. Kristol, his executive editor Fred Barnes, their families, and others attended a luncheon at Governor Palin's in Juneau:

Later the group went for a helicopter ride (but did not shoot any wolves) and touched down among mineworkers who greeted them warmly.

It's enough to make a pundit swoon. No wonder Ms. Mayer quotes Mr. Kristol as calling Governor Palin "my heartthrob" on Fox News.

What Kristol provides, unlike many writers whose opinions are equally trite and detestable, is a transparent view of the Republican operative brain. Reading him, you can almost hear the ratcheting of his mind through layers of opposition research until he thinks he has found what his candidate needs. This morning he treats us to his conversation with Governor Sarah Palin, in which they try to come up with a strategy (or at least a few tactics) to distract the country from the economic disaster created by years of right-wing governance.

When Palin mentions her recent attempts to revive interest in the connections between Barack Obama and former Weather Underground figure Bill Ayers, Kristol plays the role of consultant rather than columnist. The press reacted to Palin's ploy by pointing out that Obama was a small child when Ayers was clowning around with dynamite in the late '60s. No problem, because Kristol has a better idea: “I pointed out that Obama surely had a closer connection to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than to Ayers — and so, I asked, if Ayers is a legitimate issue, what about Reverend Wright?”

Oh, yes, what about Reverend Wright? The more pertinent question would be what, if anything, we haven’t heard already about Reverend Wright, but never mind.

Over and over again, Kristol unintentionally reveals the fundamental worldview of the neoconservatives. They are incapable of governing, bankrupt in policy, steeped in cant and prejudice, and most of all, contemptuous of the American people, whom they confidently assume can be duped into ignoring the disaster erupting all around them.

Today, late the party, comes The New York Times' William Kristol, a writer who never met a cliché he didn't like. (In January, The Atlantic's James Fallows noted "the breathtaking banality of expression" in Mr. Kristlol's column.)

Here's what Mr. Kristol writes of Ms. Palin's ascendency (after his two Times' colleagues Jim Rutenberg and Alessandra Stanley made the same reference last week):

Likening Ms. Palin to a graduate student made Mr. Kristol a lot kinder to to the candidate: Slate's Jack Shafer compared her to a remedial social studies student.