We're embarrassed to say that our colleagues in TV news have done -- at best -- a mediocre job of covering the primary elections. And it doesn't seem to be getting better.

The biggest blunder was New Hampshire, where television trusted polls showing Barack Obama winning. But many journalists don't seem to have learned much from that. Right now many news reports say a win is a loss -- at least for the GOP.

Some pundits say Mitt Romney's win in the Michigan primary shows that Republicans are in disarray. Take for example a recent New York Times piece -- presented as news, not opinion. Leading off with, "Can anyone bring the Republicans together again?" it went on to state: "This is a party that is adrift, deeply divided and uninspired when it comes to its presidential candidates and unsure of how to counter an energized Democratic Party."

Adrift? The only places you never find debate over the top leadership are those like Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Divided? The party isn't any more split than when it won elections under Ronald Reagan and both presidents named George Bush. Uninspired? If anything, the candidates and voters have been getting more fired up.

Everything in that analysis can be applied just as well to Democrats. They, too, are going back and forth between candidates as they try to juggle the interests of intellectuals, urban minorities and labor unions. And it's true that the Democratic Party is energized -- most recently by a ridiculous spat between its two leading contenders over race and whether president Lyndon Johnson had anything to do with civil rights. A little more energy like that and the Democrats will be throwing chairs at each other on their own version of Jerry Springer.

But going back to the Republicans, the varying results are possibly the sign of the party's health, not decline. There's nothing wrong with taking your time in making an important decision. As many have noted, this is the first time in decades that a presidential campaign doesn't include a sitting president or vice president. Faces are new. Time is a friend of the voter.

And they have plenty of it. As other writers have said, the presidential campaign is like a basketball game with only a minute elapsed and the score 3-2. The Republican nominee will need 1,191 delegates. No candidate currently has as much as 4 percent of that. Voters have time to sift.

Nor is it clear that Michigan hopelessly jumbles the race; if anything, it reinforces a pattern the media have tried to ignore. Some made fun of Romney's claims of "winning the silver" with second-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire. But as in auto racing for NASCAR's Nextel Cup, second-place finishes bring points toward the championship.

If a candidate consistently takes second while the No. 1 slot churns with a variety of winners, the steady No. 2 can win.

So it's really misleading to say that McCain "won" New Hampshire and that Romney "lost." Or that Huckabee "won" Iowa and the others "lost." Or that Romney "won" Michigan and McCain "lost." Delegates are collected depending on the distribution of votes.

Romney now has two first-place finishes, though you'd hardly know it from the news coverage. Somehow Romney's victory in the tiny Wyoming caucuses, and its eight delegates, has been overlooked. Wyoming is sparsely populated, true, but so is New Hampshire. Iowa isn't exactly a big state, either.

In Iowa, Huckabee had about 41,000 votes to Romney's 30,000. In New Hampshire, McCain had about 88,000 to Romney's 75,000 and Huckabee's 27,000. But those numbers are dwarfed by the number of votes cast in Michigan, where Romney received 338,000 to McCain's 258,000.

Bottom line: Romney is leading in the delegate count. CNN's analysis of delegates puts the count at Romney 52, Huckabee 22, McCain 15, Thompson 6, Paul 2, Giuliani 1 and Hunter 1.

The pressures of a difficult campaign do not mean that the Republican Party is being cut apart. The process may weld it together. Commentators have said Romney may have won in Michigan because he presented himself, at long last, as what he indubitably is: a successful businessman with a knack for getting things done. If the economy continues to slow, it may play to his strengths.

A long hard struggle may be the best thing in other ways. Presidents are on the news every day, and it's better for the public to get a long look at them now. Will John McCain's intense personality begin grating on voters' nerves? Will Mike Huckabee's slick schtick wear out? Romney's personality may wear best in the long haul.

Much could happen. But, rather than showing a party dishevelled and discouraged, this wild race shows a GOP engaged in a vigorous, healthy examination of issues and candidates. This even prompted John O'Sullivan of the National Review to exclaim, "Contrary to all expectations, the Republican race is exciting."

Pundits may soon be looking back and saying that in mid-January the Republican campaign was reshaping the party and energizing voters. By then, all talk about GOP disarray might be as old as yesterday's not-so-objective news.

Do you agree?