In 1980, I arrived late to an election night party to discover that it was all over by the time I got there. Ronald Reagan had been elected president, Jimmy Carter was moving back to Georgia, and, as I recall, it was around 8:30 p.m. We all decided to turn off the television and go out for Mexican food. If you’d like to show up late enough tonight to your election-night parties to enjoy a nice plate of chimichangas afterwards, I suggest you schedule your arrival for sometime next March. Otherwise you should plan to devote most of the next several months to an endless cycle of channel-flipping, in a frustrating search for meaningful results.

The networks will likely feel painfully hamstrung by their desire not to repeat the mistakes made in 2000 – predicting winners on a night where none ever truly emerged. This year we’ll probably notice the anchors tripping over themselves to be cautious and predictable. Messrs. Jennings and Rather have at stake their desire to fill the vacuum to be left by Tom Brokaw’s departure from the NBC Nightly News in December – which leaves no room for error. Mr. Rather bears the added burden of his addled addiction to metaphor. “Gore’s lead has evaporated faster than ice cream in a microwave,” Mr. Rather told us on election night 2000, before advising that “Bush’s lead is shakier than cafeteria Jell-o.”

At least Jon Stewart, whose “Indecision 2004: Prelude to a Fiasco” begins live coverage at 10 p.m. tonight, dares to have an opinion. Okay, so Mr. Stewart’s brand of irony can wear a little thin, and his fake-news persona has grown more histrionic (and less funny) just as his fame has reached its apex. But his show takes off when his producers and correspondents in the field – among them the uncommonly gifted Stephen Colbert, Ed Helms, Samantha Bee, and Rob Corddry – deliver brilliant, edgy twists on network coverage. Last week’s Ed Helms report from the spin room of the last debate – in which he kept accusing the various spinmeisters of lying to him with their conflicting claims of victory – reached new levels of comedy and insight, capped by Mr. Helms’s hysterical collapse on the floor in a fit of cosmic rage. At those moments, Mr. Stewart is reduced to staring into his monitor with respect for his wondrous crew.

We know the dinosaurs became extinct for a reason; so, too, have their descendants, the anchormen of the evening news. The reason is that the time has come and gone for objectivity and opinion-free coverage of major news events. We don’t need someone to tell us, “That’s the way it is” – because we know that isn’t necessarily the way it is at all. The success of Jon Stewart and his unabashed point of view has made it abundantly clear: What’s fake in television news is the notion of objectivity. Let reporters say what they think; let anchormen tell us not the way it is but explain the gap between the way it is and the way it ought to be.

David Westin, the president of ABC News, got it all wrong last week when he told a Harvard University audience that commentary on television was damaging the news media.

“The more time we express our opinions,” Mr. Westin said, “the less time we have to talk about the facts.” His demands for “unbiased” news coverage go counter to the demands of the American people – and if anything, it’s narrow-minded executives like Mr. Westin who are doing the most damage to the news business. Does he really believe there’s such a thing as facts anymore? If he does, he’s not watching the news. There’s two sides to every fact, if not more.

Maybe Mr. Westin should have been watching his own “World News Tonight” broadcast last Friday night, when Mr. Jennings referred viewers to the ABC News Web site to read the full text of Osama Bin Laden’s “fascinating but disgusting” most recent video message. Soon afterwards, Mr. Jennings apologized for his use of the word “disgusting.” He shouldn’t have. It was a rare and refreshing bit of honesty from a man who works way too hard to hide his opinions. I’d much prefer to get my news from a man like Mr. Jennings, whose momentary flash of anger towards the terrorist revealed himself to be utterly human and fallible, then from his bland counterparts. Mr. Jennings may not be the most trusted man in America, but at that moment last Friday night he was the most honest. Wouldn’t it be great if he dared to share his heart with his audience more often?

Mr. Westin – and most of his colleagues in the TV news business – have forgotten that a quarter century ago, the nightly newscasts always included commentary from journalists who combined their reporting with their passions. Men like Eric Sevareid of CBS and John Chancellor of NBC didn’t hesitate to share with us their honest feelings and opinions. Why must the hysterical mobs on cable drive commentary and opinion off the networks? If the network news executives of today had even some of the courage of their predecessors to mix news and commentary, the evening newscasts night not be dying off.

Everyone we watch on television tonight will have taken a few minutes out of their day to vote their conscience. Why must they return to their on-camera personae and pretend as though they’re covering a horse race they have no stake in? This is their country, too. I want to watch an election-night broadcast with an anchorman and reporters who act as though their future – and mine – depends on the outcome of today’s election. For his passion and honesty, not just his humor, I’ll be watching Jon Stewart tonight as the future of our country is being decided.