What, pray tell, is the purpose of the Man on the Street interview? Judging by a local TV news poll of passersby in the Times Square area, it must be to prove to the world that New Yorkers are just as uninformed as the people giving idiot responses on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” The topic of the poll was Friday’s indictment of I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff. One has to wonder how many people were screened before those shown on air were selected and why the only question asked was, “Do you think this is serious?”

“Yeah, man, giving out the name of a spy, right? That’s terrible,” one young, glassy-eyed man answered.

A better question would have been, “Do you have any idea what this is all about?”

Perhaps that is what the local stations intended to ask, but gave up after receiving too many blank stares.

Life goes on for most of us here in Gotham regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C., but it was the response of the young man that brought home the idea that this administration is simply not very good at getting its message out. Its efforts to deny blatant lies through the fourth estate have led to an indictment and a continuing, drawn-out investigation.

Those blank stares I saw last Friday on the news are understandable considering they’re from stragglers coming out of arcades or trying to watch live MTV shows on Broadway. Why don’t the local networks canvass the areas around the city’s many universities, museums, or theaters? This isn’t a snobbish question; it’s a practical one: Is it because the interviewee might give a remotely coherent response that might be longer than the standard soundbite?

I did an unscientific phone survey of friends and relatives in each of the boroughs: Rose in Queens, James in Long Island, Riki in Manhattan, Maria in Brooklyn, Sal in the Bronx, all Democrats. Their responses to my query about the Libby case ranged from “And I should care about this because … ?” to “Scooter Libby leaked the name of a covert CIA spy to discredit Joseph Wilson’s negative report that there were no WMDs in Iraq.”

Rose in Queens was the only one who seemed annoyed at another culprit. “The media is America’s worst enemy,” she said. “All they’re interested in is selling papers, not the truth.”

I wouldn’t go as far as that, but one has to wonder why the big questions aren’t being asked. Why did Judith Miller of the New York Times go to jail for months if Mr. Libby had already given her permission to name him as her source? Why is the Times now trashing her? Did “Scooter” Libby tell Ms. Miller that there are rogue CIA operators who are trying to bring down the president and his administration? Is that the big story that Ms. Miller did not write because it would have discredited all the Wilson stories the Times had previously published?

More questions that aren’t being asked: Why was Mr. Wilson sent to Niger? He had no WMD experience. The CIA director did not send him. Who authorized it? Mr. Wilson was not asked to sign a confidentiality document, which is, in itself, unheard of. Much of what Mr. Wilson claimed in his Times article has been discredited. Did he deliberately lie? How covert could Valerie Plame have been when she was listed in “Who’s Who in America” as Mr. Wilson’s wife? Besides, wasn’t she already outed by turncoat spy Aldrich Ames in 1994, and wasn’t that why she was given a desk job in D.C.?

As long as we’re discussing outing spies, why wasn’t Senator Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont, indicted for outing an Egyptian operative who was later killed? In a 1985 television interview, Mr. Leahy disclosed information about a top-secret Egyptian covert operation to hunt down the Achille Lauro hijackers.

Mr. Leahy had been the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and had allegedly threatened to sabotage classified strategies he didn’t like because he was displeased with the Reagan administration’s war on terrorism. As if this was not bad enough, “Leaky” Leahy also leaked our plan in 1986 to topple Libya’s Moammar Qaddafi. That plan had to be aborted.

Mr. Leahy had to leave the committee when genuine investigative reporters reported his leaks, but of course, he is still in the Senate preaching about the need to investigate the Plame case. Questions, questions, questions – and the answers won’t come from the man on the street but from journalists doing their job.