Agreeing to Disagree

Dennis Ryerson has editor and Vice President of the Indianapolis Start since 2003. In the following article he tells us what the editorial board of the newspaper went through in working through which presidential candidate to endorse. The paper has not endorsed a Democrat since 1964, as he writes. So what did they dod this year? Read on.

Agreeing to Disagree

Late in the morning of Oct. 15, the eight members of The Star's Editorial Board convened in Publisher Michael Kane's well-appointed fourth floor conference room. The topic: editorial election "endorsements" for various political offices.

Opinion/Community Conversations Editor Tim Swarens opened the discussion. He noted that the editorial page staff would recommend endorsements in 34 races. The partisan breakdown would be 18 Democrat, 16 Republican, excluding the presidential race.

We reviewed the list, discussed the more hotly contested races and ratified the recommendations.

Except for one -- our presidential endorsement.

Michael, the publisher who joined Star Media three months ago, chaired the session. He acknowledged that he was still getting to know the group and the paper's history. He went around the table, inviting each board member to comment. McCain or Obama?

Columnist Russ Pulliam, editorial page copy editor Beth Murphy, Community Conversations coordinator Jane Lichtenberg, cartoonist Gary Varvel, editorial writer/columnist Dan Carpenter, Tim and I outlined our respective views.

Back and forth we went.

We could reach no consensus and we were running out of time.

Michael adjourned the meeting, instructing us to think about it more. We would resume the discussion later. Our presidential endorsement, scheduled to run a week ago today, would hold. We would in its place run our endorsement of Gov. Mitch Daniels' re-election.

Fast-forward to last Tuesday when we met again late in the morning around the same table.

We argued one side, then the other, sometimes with strong emotions. We considered the newspaper's traditional positions; it had not endorsed a Democrat for president since 1964. We debated economic policies and foreign affairs and the tone and substance of Obama and McCain. We reviewed the vice presidential choices, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden.

Nothing had changed. We remained evenly split.

We considered options. Two editorials, one making the case for Obama, the other for McCain?

That didn't sound right. We reach a consensus in every other issue we address with our staff editorials; we needed a consensus on this one.

No recommendation at all?

That didn't sound right, either. We knew many readers expected a comment on the most important race of the season.

Should the publisher make the call for us and allow the "losing" side a written dissent? No go. We wanted a consensus statement.

So it came to this. We agreed to disagree. We would produce one editorial summing up our views.

It's a strange year. Were I asked by the man in the moon to describe the political leanings of our country, I'd say Americans were center-right. Yet we've had nearly two terms of a frustrating and until recently ill-prosecuted conflict in Iraq, economic troubles and widespread criticism from abroad. We've seen a level of White House arrogance that has troubled even some Republicans. That's why many Americans seem willing to forgo their center-right tendencies to consider the case of a liberal and little-tested African-American U.S. senator from Chicago.

For The Star's editorial board, with its history of mostly right-of-center positions and our desire to maintain consistency without being outwardly partisan, it became a tough and in the end extraordinarily difficult choice. Turn the page to learn more.

Thanks for reading The Indianapolis Star.

source: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081026/OPINION06/810260327