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William Goldman, the splendid screenwriter who gave us Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President's Men, once famously (and in upper case) exposed the great secret of how Hollywood works: "NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING".

This is a pretty useful summary in lots of human endeavors, but let's just apply it for now to the world of political analysts, or as we/they are commonly known, pundits (a word taken from Hindi, by the way). As it happens, this proposition can be tested scientifically by the happy coincidence of several unusual off-year elections in the U.S. and four federal by-elections in Canada, all in the past two weeks.

Reactions to these contests in both countries go far to underline the acumen of New York Times columnist—yes, and pundit—Frank Rich, whose weekly Sunday essay should never be missed. . Rich loves to use the wonderfully onomatopoeic adjective "bloviating" to describe much of what passes for punditry in his country, and if he cared to peek further north (for unimaginable reasons) in ours as well.

I should stress that I don't count as pundits those party hacks who are always available to peddle the party line about anything they're asked. What is remarkable about these spin doctors is not their duty to prove their side invariably right and everyone else hopelessly wrong (and probably malicious). No, the crazy-making thing is that the media actually report their agitprop as news.

The most mind-boggling example of this phenomenon in both countries comes right after an election-time leaders' debate, when employees of each leader holds a little press scrum and asserts with a straight face that his (usually a "his") leader was the unquestioned victor of the evening.

I confess I might have been a borderline spinner at one stage in my callow youth, but I always refused to spin after a debate; it was not only demeaning for the spinners but for reporters who seemed to take the whole fiasco seriously.

Besides party hacks, I also mean to exclude here those so-called commentators whose opinion is well known even before the event they are commenting on. I refer of course to all of Fox News and any of the teeming multitude of rightist nutbars who proliferate mostly but not alas exclusively in the U.S. All conservatives everywhere claim that the media in their country has an overwhelming liberal bias, to which I say: If only it were true.

So let's return to the real punditocracy, as the great American media maven Eric Alterman calls them (Alterman happens to be a real liberal, thank heavens). These you can find in all media, and now, thanks to the magic of the internet, in a billion blogs that serve you right if you bother to read any of them. Here are their shrewd insights about the elections last week in the US that you can take to the bank:

* Obama is in big trouble. Or, the results have no bearing on Obama.

*The Democrats must move even further to the centre. Or, the Democrats need to deliver on more progressive legislation.

* The Republicans are on their way back. Or, the Republicans have been taken over by a minority of demented extremists. Or,

Very conservative Republicans can be elected. Or, very conservative Republicans need to prove they're not very conservative.

*The American political scene is an embarrassment to the concept of democracy.

I'd say that at least one of these assertions has the penetrating ring of A BIG TRUTH, as Bill Goldman might have said.

Canada had its 4 by-elections earlier this week, and on the basis of the pundits' incessant bloviations ever since, anxious Canadians can agree that we can now bet on the following truths:

*The Liberals are in big trouble. Or, the Liberals are in really big trouble.

* The Conservatives are on the move in Quebec. Or, the Conservatives won a Quebec seat due to local conditions. Or, the Bloc will take their setback as a warning sign and pull themselves together as they always have done and trounce the Conservatives again.

*The NDP is on the verge of replacing the Liberals as a major party. Or, the NDP is always on the verge of replacing the Liberals. Don't hold your breath.

* By-elections are strong indicators of future trends. Or, by-elections rarely tell us anything serious about political fortunes. And,

* The turnout in all four by-elections was derisory, from a high of 36 per cent to a low of 22 per cent. Almost 60 per cent of Canadians voted in the 2008 general election, a shamefully low number but vastly greater than those who bothered to vote last Monday. In fact, most citizens likely had no idea there was a by-election in their riding at all. We have no idea why so many voters stayed away, and remarkably few pundits (or news stories) have noted this crucial piece of information. But rest assured as soon as they're asked about it, they'll have the right explanation at their very fingertips.

So for all you political junkies, never forget this eternal verity:

WILLIAM GOLDMAN LIVES.

Gerald Caplan is a former national campaign director for the New Democratic Party and author of The Betrayal of Africa