Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511150089
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS ASSOCIATED EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"Thank you Roanoke Times," it said above pictures of four GOP candidates, state Sen. Brandon Bell and House challengers Trixie Averill, Jeff Artis and Newell Falkinburg. "By not endorsing us, we're in great company!" - followed by photos of "other great leaders not endorsed by the Roanoke Times": Gov. George Allen, U.S. Rep. Robert Goodlatte and former Presidents Reagan and Bush.
The syntax was off - but the ad was factually accurate; effective in making its point that if those goofballs at the newspaper were too dumb to endorse Allen et al., don't pay 'em any heed now; wry enough to be refreshingly different.
Not that we never endorse Republicans or always endorse Democrats. In the 1980 presidential election when Reagan was first elected, we declined to endorse not only him but also his opponents, Democrat Jimmy Carter and independent John Anderson. This year, of the six local-government races in the region in which we took a stand, we favored four Democrats and two Republicans for various boards of supervisors. As noted in an editorial that coincidentally ran on the same day as the ad, we came out in favor of three Republicans, two Democrats and an independent running against a Democrat in the comparable legislative elections four years ago.
Clearly, some people read our editorial endorsements, which is nice to know. Just as clearly, many don't agree with our choices. That's also nice to know: Such disagreement, and its peaceful resolution via elections, is the lifeblood of democracy. We're trying to provoke thought and discussion as much as to persuade.
We consider ourselves a politically independent editorial page partly because we do not feel constrained to endorse candidates of any particular party, and partly because we feel free to praise or criticize politicians' performance once in office regardless of party affiliation.
But ideas matter. We consider this not only a nonpartisan page, but also a middle-of-the-road page ideologically. It would be passing strange to simply ignore the editorial positions we take the rest of the year when endorsement time rolls around. As the Republican Party has drifted from the mainstream in recent years, we have tended to endorse fewer Republicans.
Again, however, this is by no means automatic. In neither party does every candidate think alike.
Moreover, questions of individual effectiveness, experience or character can enter into endorsement decisions - though, as editorial page editor Alan Sorensen observed in a column just over a year ago, the word "endorsement" is something of a misnomer. They're not intended as a guarantee of future performance or moral probity. Rather, we're simply doing in public what voters are asked to do in private: Make a choice among two or more candidates for public office.
As Sorensen also observed, newspaper endorsements are not really the newspaper's. They do not necessarily reflect the views of all the people who work here, or the views of a majority of them, or the views of even very many. Rather, they reflect the consensus of the editorial board, which is comprised of those whose names you see every day in the box below the editorials on the opposite page.
Nor are editorial endorsements related to news coverage, which is undertaken by an entirely different staff, with a somewhat different mission, operating under somewhat different rules. If you want straight news, don't look for it in the pages labeled "Opinion" and "Commentary."
In any reasonably competitive election, an editorial endorsement - it doesn't matter of which candidate - will go against the views of 40 to 60 percent of the voters. So why do we bother?
Some readers think we shouldn't. A lady who did not leave her name told our Reader Comment line that she was canceling her subscription because she didn't like our editorial endorsing incumbent Democratic state Sen. Madison Marye. "You should let the people pick who[m] they want by presenting both sides of an issue," she said, "not yours."
Another reader, in a letter signed "A Concerned Person," told us: "You certainly should not endorse a Democrat or a Republican but present a fair opinion and true of every candidate, which you do not. ... Why do you think you are so qualified? No one should publish a paper advising people how to vote."
But there are good reasons why newspaper election endorsements have been around about as long as there have been newspapers and elections. If newspaper editorial pages offer opinions on every other public issue under the sun, they're shirking their duty if they opt out on issues so key as who should be elected to public office.
Our qualifications for making election endorsements, or for expressing any other editorial opinion, are ultimately no more nor less than those of any other citizen. The difference is that it's our job, and not only at election time, to take the measure of public issues, arrive at conclusions about them, and forge written cases for those conclusions. The last is by far the most valuable part of the exercise; it is the means by which public debate is advanced.
And not only by us. Just on our own Opinion and Commentary pages, from 60 percent to 80 percent of the space each day is devoted to the diverse viewpoints of others, as expressed in letters, columns and commentaries.
Among them, to cite one particularly relevant example, is Ray L. Garland's weekly column, written from the perspective of a former Republican legislator who keeps up an interest in politics and state government. He began the column after losing a congressional election in which we endorsed his opponent, then-Rep. Jim Olin.
In that election, the voters happened to agree with us. But the year before, when we endorsed Garland for re-election to the state Senate and he lost, they didn't. And four years before that, then-Del. Garland won the Senate seat - after we had endorsed his opponent.
We may be deluded about many things. But I don't think we're so deluded as to believe that our editorial endorsements are anything more than one voice among many, or that the voters await breathlessly for our endorsements so they can march in lockstep to whatever tune we happen to call.
The opinions that really count are those expressed at the ballot box, not in our editorials. Just ask Messrs. Allen, Goodlatte, Reagan or Bush.
by CNB