The Chronicle‘s interim editorial page editor James Howard Gibbons made some curious decisions with today’s editorial page.
The Chronicle chose not to devote a staff editorial to the second inauguration of President Bush.
Instead, one staff editorial noted that scandals continue to taint the legacy of former Mayor Lee Brown (more on this Chron “discovery” later), and the other staff editorial asserted that, “emotion aside, the United States and France have little choice but to cooperate on every level,” while getting in a petty dig at Texans who chose to boycott French goods for a time.
Gibbons did decide to run a highly critical op-ed by Harold Meyerson that denigrates the President and the state of Texas, while extolling that Texan warrior on poverty and the north Vietnamese, Lyndon Baines Johnson. The piece originally appeared in the Washington Post, which had the good sense to run it yesterday, rather than on inaugural day. Meyerson is a staunch liberal who regularly writes for the American Prospect and LA Weekly.
The state’s other major newspapers were varied in their editorial page treatments of the inaugural. The Dallas Morning News chose to tout the President as a potentially visionary leader with its lead editorial. The Austin American-Statesman focused more on the inauguration as an American institution with its staff editorial, and also included a fairly tame inaugural op-ed by Washington Post columnist David Broder. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram chose not to address the inauguration with a house editorial, but did pick up the Broder column, and ran a more critical piece by “staff writer” Linda Campbell; a George Will column refers to the President’s second term, but focuses on Social Security reform. The San Antonio Express-News did not devote a staff editorial to the inauguration, but the inauguration was referenced in an op-ed by a teenager.
It strikes me that neither the Chronicle nor the Express-News has produced “editorial pages in their ideal state” today.
