WASHINGTON At a time when the medias duty to vet candidates is more urgent than ever, journalism is giving Donald Trump a free pass, leading historian Doris Kearns Goodwin told The Huffington Post in an interview.

Trump deploys fame for fames sake; taps into populist expressions of fear, hatred and resentment and shows a knack for picking fights and a braggarts focus on the horse race. All of which allow him to play into and exploit every media weakness and bad habit in a chase for audience and numbers.

As a result, said Goodwin, the 69-year-old Trump has preempted serious scrutiny of his past, character, record in business and suitability if any for the office of president.

In the old days Goodwin writes about, vetting (and probably dismissing) Trump would also have been the province of party leaders: prominent, experienced (though not necessarily wise) power brokers in politics, government, business and other upper realms of American society.

But the phrase party leader today is an oxymoron, and picking nominees today is totally the province of voters in caucuses and primaries, which makes the civic role of the mainstream press all that more important, Goodwin observed.

We in the media are the key purveyors of the qualities of the candidates and of telling people who they are and what they stand for, said Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize winner whose best-selling books on Lincoln, the Roosevelts and Lyndon B. Johnson include studies of their dealings with the press.

The responsibilities are pretty great.

Is the press carrying out those responsibilities in the case of Trump?

No. I dont think so, she said.