Craft Policy to Lift All Boats

“Ascribing the 2016 election to your opponent’s bigotry makes clear that [you think] the problem was not that Democrats didn’t do enough to deserve people’s votes, but that the people weren’t good enough to deserve Democrat’s governance…. One imagines that, sooner rather than later, even Democrats will come to suspect that denigrating people until they vote for you lacks a certain strategic plausibility.”

Our hometown paper’s editorial page provides thoughtful arguments on all sides of the most important questions we face. It has been doing this for a long time and we owe our thanks.

The page balances excellent analysis of local and national issues by the ABJ editorial staff with a carefully selected re-printing of commentary (and great political cartoons) from a wide variety of perspectives found in the best newspapers in the nation.

Recently, the page included a great piece by Helaine Olen, for instance, commenting on a recent study of education. The study shows that when we compare the graduation rates of kids with the same kindergarten test scores we observe that 70% of those from wealthy families graduate from college (and go on to successful careers) while only 30% of those from poor families do the same. This challenges my own deeply held belief in the value of a good education by pointing out that even if we did fix our educational system we would still have a lot of work left to do to get to that meritocracy promised land.

Much to my dismay the paper also printed commentaries by Christopher Richardson and Henry Olsen. Both are well below the paper’s normally very high standards. Both are thinly disguised apologists for brazenly and repeatedly doubling down on falsehoods. While that happens sometimes when a paper is dedicated to ensuring we are exposed to arguments from as many sides as possible, I hope this is not a reflection of new ownership putting their thumb on the scale. Neither link is provided here because neither is worth reading.

Today, the paper reprints a George Will column, a conservative from the Washington Post and a strong critic of the current president and his enablers like Olsen and Richardson. Will concludes with the statement I started with above (quoting another). Another good read. Thanks ABJ. We are fortunate to still have a strong local newspaper.