What were these public officials thinking?

Where's their common sense? Jim Gibbons. Oscar Goodman. Harry Reid. Barbara Cegavske. We could probably look a little harder and find more examples, but these four pop to mind just in the last week as sorry examples of Nevada leaders whose judgment we're supposed to trust on major decisions.

And yet ...

Gibbons stole somebody else's speech. Goodman glorified his gin-drinking to fourth-graders. Reid called Alan Greenspan "one of the biggest political hacks we have here in Washington" during a national interview. Cegavske says it's "unfortunate" there's a flap over her being on the payroll of a TV station.

That's why free speech is so important. The more people open their mouths, the more we find out about them.

Gibbons we've already taken to task, even though he's still sounding like he should be off the hook because he apologized.

Goodman is being praised for his "honesty" in telling fourth-graders he would take a bottle of gin to a desert island. That's honest, all right. If there was any doubt where his priorities lie, he removed them.

Reid apparently is going to let partisan politics get in the way of statesmanship, a move which is likely to rapidly dissipate his influence. It looks increasingly like he believes Social Security is an all-or-nothing issue.

And Cegavske is looking a bit bewildered at the fuss over her being a paid consultant to a TV station on education issues while serving in the Nevada Legislature.

We don't expect public officials to be perfect. We'll forgive them their occasional mistakes. But we'll also remember when it came to deciding whether to say or do something reasonable people would find highly questionable, they flunked.