On the first day of November, The Cavalier Daily continued a newspaper tradition by endorsing candidates for the House of Representatives, the Senate and president (“Searching for Mr. Right,” Nov. 1). Several readers, including at least one who seemed not to realize that editorials express opinions, continued another tradition by arguing about those endorsements.
Not every newspaper endorses candidates. Only one of the three largest newspapers in Virginia has endorsed a presidential candidate this year. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has announced that Mitt Romney “has earned our enthusiastic endorsement.”
According to University of California Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project, Norfolk’s Virginian Pilot announced in 2007 that it would no longer endorse presidential candidates. The Roanoke Times didn’t endorse anyone, either. Christina Nuckols, the paper’s editorial page editor, explained in a column that it’s The Roanoke Times’ editorial board’s policy “to endorse in races in which we offer a perspective you can’t find in other newspapers, news channels and other media … We still comment on the presidential campaign because of its significance and because the issues facing our nation are the same across all elections this fall, but we limit endorsements to races central to our core mission as an opinion leader in this community. We will not endorse a presidential candidate.”
Anyone who has been near Roanoke lately might question the assertion that The Roanoke Times is an opinion leader in that community, but it apparently aspires to be, which makes it difficult to understand why it would not want to express an opinion about who should hold the highest elected office in the country. The Times certainly is not alone in its reticence on the presidency.
The country’s largest papers, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, do not endorse candidates.
As of publication, The American Presidency Project’s count of the nation’s 100 largest newspapers showed that 41 had endorsed the president’s re-election; 34 had endorsed the challenger; two had announced they were undecided; and 15 planned to make no endorsement.
Are those numbers evidence of trends bending the race one way or another? Perhaps. Probably not. What about the papers that endorsed a different party’s candidate than they did in the last presidential election? Among the nation’s largest papers, that contest is running 12-to-1 in Romney’s favor. Those party-switching Romney-backers include the Des Moines Register, which last endorsed a Republican in 1972. That was the year Richard Nixon was re-elected. We know how well that worked out for Nixon and the country.
Do these endorsements matter? In some sense, no. There is no proof they change anyone’s vote. Often, readers of a paper’s editorial page have a very good idea of the paper’s preference long before it is announced. No one would be surprised to learn, for example, that both The New York Times and The Washington Post have endorsed President Obama.
According to a recent column by Patrick Pexton, The Washington Post’s ombudsman, the paper has been endorsing presidential candidates regularly since 1976. It has endorsed a Democrat every time except 1988. That year, the paper did not endorse anyone.
The Wall Street Journal does not endorse candidates, but is there really any doubt which candidate that paper’s editorial board prefers?
John Woolley, political science professor and co-director of the American Presidency Project, thinks that misses the point. He wrote on The Huffington Post, “Remarkably, nearly every endorsement editorial I have seen reflects thoughtfully on the meaning of the election. Of course, editorial boards weight the issues differently. But from the smallest paper to the largest, they identify priority issues and say what they think the evidence shows. It is helpful even for a political junkie … We need more, not fewer, examples of calm reasoned argument. A good editorial may contribute to more informed and thoughtful voting even if it does not change a single mind. That’s beneficial. A focus on doing whatever it takes to sway votes has gotten us the ugly politics we now endure. We get useful information from the way newspaper editors, as opinion leaders, evaluate a common set of circumstances — even in the age of Twitter and Google.”
Maybe. But some newspapers’ editorials are closer to warmed-over campaign pitches than “calm reasoned argument.” Yet Woolley’s right that the “focus on doing whatever it takes to sway votes has gotten us the ugly politics we now endure.” That has also become the focus of too much political reporting. It is cliché to say that the media is too caught up in the horse race and too inattentive to what the winning horse will have to do after the race is won. It’s cliché, but it’s true. If endorsements can add any measure of thoughtful discussion to a presidential campaign, any at all, we should be happy to live with their shortcomings.
Tim Thornton is the ombudsman for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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