In barely more time than elapsed between the first press reports of Gary Hart’s indiscretions and his forced withdrawal from the Democratic presidential race, Deleware Senator Joe Biden has gone from serious contender to shocked victim—done in by news reports of him plagiarizing speeches and hyping his rather flawed academic record.

Is the press out to prove its power by sabotaging one liberal Democrat after another? No. We are taking seriously our responsibility to deal with the character and competence of potential presidents. But we are doing it in our usual imperfect way.

art’s behavior was not simply a matter of gossip. His inability to maintain a minimum degree of self-discipline or discretion raised serious questions. So did the difficulty he displayed in facing the truth and reality of his situation.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, the biographer of Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedys, recently said that political journalists ought to pay close attention to how truthful presidential candidates are in their reflections of reality. Her reason? Once behind the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there is inevitably a strong temptation to reconstruct the world as you wish it to be.

The same LBJ who invented a grandfather who died heroically at the Alamo, she pointed out, had no problem converting what was at best an ambiguous naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin into the excuse for a massive escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

That’s why reporters highlighted Biden’s appropriation of others’ words and sentiments—and even their life experiences. It’s why we twitched when we learned he had invented an academic reknown for himself far greater than his record.

Also worrisome is that in many of the troubling campaign incidents, Biden was simply acting on instinct. The Kinnock plagiarism, probably the most damaging, occurred to him in a van on the way to an Iowa debate. The videotaped exchange with a New Hampshire voter, in which he misrepresented his own academic record, was a spontaneous question-and-answer session.

The concern about Biden among many who have known and worked with him is that his impulses are unchecked by judgment or reflection. Two long-time personal and political associates of campaign consultant Patrick Caddell, Biden’s close friend and mentor, told me in separate conversations last year that they had declined to join Caddell in helping Biden because—as one put it—”there is no filter” that Biden applies to Caddell’s input.

In Senate hearings, Biden often appeared so caught up in his own thoughts he could barely define a question to the witness. In his celebrated exchange with Secretary of State George Schultz on South Africa policy last year, the senator appeared almost out of control. A liberal lobbyist who worked with him commented on his habit of showing up late for stategy meetings and often straying from the agenda:

“When you’re elected to the Senate at age 29, it’s easy to think the meeting begins when you walk through the door and the subject is whatever you’ve got on your mind.”

All those things provided the context in which reporters viewed these recent, self-destructive incidents. I do not think we exaggerated their import—any more than we did in the incidents involving Gary Hart.

But there is still a distortion, because no human being can be reduced to one or two traits without serious risk of caricature. In Hart’s case, the picture we drew at the end omitted many of his redeeming qualities: his intelligence, his willingness to do the hard work of policy analysis on critical questions, even the steadfastness of his political course, in sharp contrast to his out-of-control personal behavior.

Similarly, with Biden the focus has been too narrow to do justice to the man. He is impulsive, but not all his instincts are self-serving or self-aggrandizing. Last summer, I saw him walk away from a large number of clamoring fans at a Chicago meeting (many were political activists any presidential candidate would love to recruit) and closet himself for close to an hour with a stranger in pain.

The man had almost broken down while telling Biden he had just learned he had a fatal disease—AIDS. He could deal with the threat to his life, but not with the prospect that his treatment might leave his family financially bankrupt. “What kind of a society is this?” he asked in his pain.

That much I overheard. The rest was between Biden and this man, but when I saw the man later in the meeting, he seemed calmer. Biden had found a way to help him, if only by listening. And he did it out of a generous impulse. That compassion, too, deserves to be noted about the latest departed candidate.