As the dust begins to settle from the Democratic takeover of the House and Senate, it becomes easier to get a perspective on the dynamics which drove the results in this midterm election.

Perspective sometimes arrives in strange ways. Tonight I tuned in to David Letterman's show because impressionist Rich Little was a guest. He was an old favorite of mine, a very funny guy whose impressions were almost always dead-on, from the sound of the voice to the mannerisms. Rich hasn't lost a thing, and he did a selection of short bits from some of his favorite impressions, including Johnny Carson. It was as if Johnny were reborn and center stage again for a few seconds. This reminded me of one of my favorite Carson routines.

For years Johnny and sidekick Ed McMahon had hinted at a great bit they did called, "The King Is Dead," but they never did it on air until, I believe, the mid-1970s. It was very simple: Johnny and Ed are at their usual seats at Johnny's desk, each with a beverage. They begin to toast, "Long live the King!" but before they can drink, a band member bursts through the curtain and shouts, "The King is dead!"

As was auld tradition, Johnny and Ed repeat, "The King is dead! - Long live the King!" and again, begin to drink to the new monarch. Another messenger jumps on stage, just as they begin to sip, with the news, "The King is NOT dead!" . . . at which point, Johnny and Ed spray out their beverages. That's the bit. It's the old vaudeville spit-take. Not funny in writing, but hilarious slapstick in live action.

The message of this midterm is really that "the King is NOT dead!" Web-surfers and bloggers had been almost convinced that the New Media of online news services and blogging with its instant worldwide distribution had turned the corner on the Old Media of television news and newspapers. This belief was based on events in the 2004 campaign. First, when Old Media completely ignored the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and their complaints against John Kerry, New Media kept their story alive and gave it an outlet. The furious debate about them on internet message boards and blogs finally forced Kerry to confront them, which meant the Old Media stonewall was broken.

Then, when Dan Rather attempted the late hit on President Bush with the Texas Air National Guard allegations on 60 Minutes using documents which seemed to prove the charges, the "blogosphere" came into its own. After a reader posting questioned the documents, bloggers like Scott Johnson of Powerline and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs took a closer look at the documents themselves, and discovered they not only didn't follow the format of military memoranda at the time, but that they had been produced with a standard word processing program, not a typewriter. The attempt to throw the election with a bogus story was thwarted; Dan Rather was disgraced and forced to retire.

On any number of other stories since, bloggers similarly scooped the Old Media, and confidence grew that the tide had finally turned against control of information being held in the hands of a few media elites who could practically control public opinion.

Not so fast there, Sonny. There is an old saying: "If you set out to kill the King - kill the King!" This simply reminds the plotter of the consequences of failure. That taste of blood and bitter wormwood in our mouths last Tuesday night was a result of those consequences.

Immediately after the 2004 elections, the Old Media lions let out a mighty roar. They would "not go gently into that good night." They began trash-talking the economy right away. If growth was superior to Clinton years, they ignored it and lambasted lagging job creation. When growth and job creation had risen to levels which could hardly be spun any longer in 2005, they caught a break with Hurricane Katrina and the resulting spikes in gas prices.

On Iraq, of course, they were relentlessly negative. This was nothing new, though - Old Media had already rolled out the old "quagmire" routines when the Afghanistan invasion had seemingly bogged down a few weeks in, but were caught offguard and off script when Kabul fell. They were more than willing to play the doomsayer on Iraq from the start, making major stories of the fake looting of the Iraqi National Museum and the false allegations of "missing" munitions from an ammo dump the Army had captured.

Similarly, when corruption charges hit Republicans, it was a huge story, kept at the forefront long enough for Democrats to envision a campaign against the "culture of corruption." When Democratic Rep. William Jefferson was caught on FBI video accepting $100,000 cash bribe and $90,000 was found in his home freezer, it was downplayed - UNTIL Speaker of the House Denny Hastert voiced anger at the FBI search of Jefferson's House office, when the story became a "checks and balances" fight instead one over a crooked Democrat. Similarly, Democratic Rep. Allan Mulhollan received such a pass on his miraculous accumulation of millions in wealth while not doing anything but steering contracts to his cronies that he wasn't even seriously in danger of losing reelection.

We set out to kill the King and failed. Old Media showed its teeth and threw out any pretense of objectivity, and delivered the midterm elections to Democrats who had no plan for Iraq, no program of legislation, no principles, and no ideas other than complaints and hating Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

There was no wave of support for Democratic ideas which turned this midterm, because they offered no ideas to draw support. The many close races show the country is still narrowly divided, and can be tipped by a determined Fourth Estate which now perceives its role as a partisan advocate.

Beware angering old lions.