If you’re the president of the United States and only 29 percent of the people you serve think you’re doing a good job (or 26 percent, depending upon the poll), your job can be pretty rough.
If you’re the letters editor for The Denver Post, and the president is at 29 percent, well, your job can be pretty rough, too.
We’re often criticized for being too hard on President Bush, for printing only the “bad things.” I’ve even needled our letters editor, Cohen Peart, over the years about why we don’t run more positive letters from our readers about the president. Basically, I was jokingly accusing him of being part of some vast left-wing conspiracy.
But in the hours and days after Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, I found myself rummaging through the stacks of letters.
“Surely there’s one here … somewhere,” I muttered.
We were deluged with letters from readers who were outraged with Bush, but very few who supported his decision. In fact, they ran 5 to 1 in favor of outrage.
Finding just the right balance of opinions from our readers isn’t an easy task.
It’s not that they weren’t informed. When the story was swirling on the 24-hour news channels, pundits wondered aloud if it would “play” in middle America. Would people outside the Beltway understand the intricacies of the Valerie Plame case? After all, they argued, you didn’t need to be a constitutional scholar to figure out why President Clinton was impeached for perjury. He cheated on his wife, got caught and lied about it under oath.
But would people get this?
Our letter-writers weren’t short of opinion.
“Let’s rub a little more ‘salt in the wound’ of all the brave men and women who have fought and died to defend this great country,” wrote Robert Duffy of Aurora. “Truth, Honor, Dignity and the U.S. Constitution are all just a big joke to this Bush administration.”
“Lying was an impeachable offense for President Clinton, but it’s not a crime for Scooter Libby?” asked Suzanne Gagnon of Lakewood.
And those were the nicer ones.
We try to give readers of The Open Forum a taste of many different perspectives on an issue. (Rarely are there just two sides.) Sometimes, it’s impossible to hit that perfect balance.
Take last week’s column by John S. Koppel, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, who wrote that the DOJ and the government have been “thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful” under the Bush administration.
We received nearly eight letters supporting his stance for every one that supported Bush’s policies. But we don’t have the space to accurately reflect that sentiment, i.e., to run nine total letters on one topic. So instead, we have a four-letter package today with three in favor and one against.
Some people argue that newspapers ought to print one positive letter for every negative. But that defies reality even more.
We’ll continue to try to strike a proper balance. But it wouldn’t hurt to hear from more of the 29 percent.
Dan Haley (dhaley@denverpost.com) is The Denver Post’s Editorial Page Editor.
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