Last week, I agreed with President Trump. No, not about calling on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to stop prosecuting Republicans, or about decrying the new book by Bob Woodward as “fiction” (also, “boring”), or about his administration’s efforts to keep immigrant children and their parents detained indefinitely, or … I’ll just stop right there.
Where I find myself in agreement with the president is his branding of the administration official who penned an anonymous op-ed for the New York Times as “gutless.”
But let me back up. Part of my job in the editorial department is reading the letters to the editor, which arrive by the dozens every day and are my favorite part of the opinion pages. So far this year, we have received more than 5,000 letters, published most of those online and put more than 2,000 of them in print.
Earlier in the week, I got an email from a letter writer who had second thoughts about her submission. She had expressed a strong opinion and was worried that people would judge her negatively, she said, so she wrote a second letter with a softer take on what she wanted to say.
That letter was fine, but she realized her initial submission better expressed her thoughts and agreed that was the version that should run. I was happy this was the case. When you read as many letters as I do, you can’t help but develop a preference, and this was one of my favorite kind of letters: The kind with a sharp opinion that’s not insulting and which can’t neatly be labeled “liberal” or “conservative.”
Regardless of whether I liked her letter, though, her reticence was understandable and warranted. Unless you’re foolhardy, have a columnist’s ego or regularly wear socks with sandals in public, you naturally care what others think of you. Expressing your thoughts on the controversial issues of the day, in a highly polarized environment — with your name attached — is not for the faint of heart.
Sometimes people will write in, have a great letter, and then ask that their name not be used. While I sympathize, that’s not how this works. Unless your safety is an issue, and what you have to say can only be said by you, publishing an anonymous opinion is difficult to justify. You “don’t throw stones and hide your hands,” if you will.
While repercussions for sharing your opinion are rare, they do happen. It’s a risk we all take. Just ask the local businesses that opposed President Bush or expressed support for President Trump. There have even been cases, rarely, of letter writers being contacted directly — by anonymous cowards, of course.
Which brings us to the administration official who wrote the op-ed and was allowed to go unnamed by the New York Times. The writer called the president amoral and said “anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision-making.”
Yeah, we know. What else you got?
The president “shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives.” Ah-ha. Trump’s impulses are “generally anti-trade and anti-democratic.” Sure. His leadership style is “adversarial, petty and ineffective.” No duh.
The big takeaway is that officials within the administration are working to make sure the president does as little damage as possible, but even that has been reported ad nauseam. So what “important perspective,” as the editor’s note that accompanies the piece states, does this anonymous op-ed bring to readers?
I can see why the Times did it — that oh-so-journalistic impulse of having something others don’t — and I see how it might make the writer feel better, but the paper made a mistake in running it and the official never should have written something that damning unless they were willing to own up to it.
I know, I know, obviously the situation is very different, and I absolutely want someone by the president’s side who can curb his more destructive impulses, but that person should at least have the same strength of character that our letter writers show every day.
