If you’d like to know why the New York Times — once an order of magnitude above any other paper in the country — is in such trouble today, look no further than today’s front-page story on John Boehner, the House minority leader. Appearing above the fold on page one, it fills up most of a page inside.

It seems — are you sitting down? — as though John Boehner deals with lobbyists. The shock! The horror! After reporting on a meeting with lobbyists regarding the bank-regulations bill that passed earlier this year, for instance, the article reads:

That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.

It is, of course, equally business as usual for all congressional leaders, Republican and Democrat alike. Members of Congress deal with lobbyists every day of their professional lives, striking alliances, raising money, seeking to influence public opinion and thus win votes in Congress. The Times, in effect, is accusing Mr. Boehner of practicing politics.

The story is astonishingly thin. Are his ties to lobbyists “especially tight”? Who knows? The Times gives no examples whatever of the dealings of other Congressional leaders with lobbyists. The Times writes, “From 2000 to 2007, Mr. Boehner flew at least 45 times, often with his wife, Debbie, on corporate jets provided by companies including R. J. Reynolds. (As required, Mr. Boehner reimbursed part of the costs.)” So he didn’t do anything against House rules, apparently. But how does his aeronautical hitchhiking compare with, say, that of Steny Hoyer, the Democratic majority leader, or Sander Levin, the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee? The Times doesn’t bother to say, which raises the suspicion that Democratic leaders like flying around in private jets about as much as Republican ones do. To paraphrase Mrs. August Belmont, who, a century ago, was talking about private railroad cars, “A private jet is not an acquired taste. One takes to it immediately.”

The lede in the online edition of the story gives the game away. “As Democrats try to cast John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, as the face of the Republican Party, his ties to lobbyists are under attack.” Of course, under House rules, the Speaker is nearly all-powerful and the minority party, and thus its leader, have almost no power. They are nearly irrelevant to the legislative process in the House. So it’s going to be up-hill work trying to make Boehner into the Republican Nancy Pelosi.

This article, which alleges no wrongdoing and gives no comparisons, is simply an attempt to further the Democrats’ plan to demonize Boehner. It is water carrying, plain and simple, proving only that the Times’s ties with the Democratic Party are especially tight.