Yesterday Paul Gigot, Editor of the Editorial Page of the Wall Street Journal, moderated a discussion of Dick Cheney on Fox News. What follows is my letter to him about it.
Dear Mr. Gigot:
I used to look forward to Fridays on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. You and Mark Shields would discuss the issues of the day with more civility and decency than any other show on television. Putting aside who was right and who was left, you participated in a format that was intelligent, informative and left us with hope that some common ground existed between Republicans and Democrats.
Yesterday I saw you on Fox News leading a discussion about Vice President Cheney. You commented on his low ratings and asked for an accounting of his unpopularity.
The answer that you got was something like this:
The liberals hate Dick Cheney for two reasons: First, he "skewered" John Edwards in the 2004 Vice Presidential Debates and liberals will never forget that. Second, he championed the tax cuts (which help the economy) and liberals hate tax cuts.
How is it possible that you could moderate a program and allow such a mindless answer go unchallenged? If you have applied a general anesthesia to your inner-watchdog for democracy, perhaps you could at least observe that most Americans view the Vice President as the éminence grise of this administration.
Is it not clear by now that President Bush is a genial man with a very limited interest in his job? The real power in this government is the Vice President. The extreme nature of the administration, from both a foreign and domestic policy standpoint, find root not in the thinking of George W. Bush, but Richard Cheney.
Mr. Gigot, I am very sad for you. When I saw you yesterday on Fox, I imagined P.T. Barnum hiring a noted scholar or writer to do tricks with monkeys at the circus to entertain the crowds. Fox News is so far beneath you. I know they are paying you handsomely to do tricks with the monkeys, but you can still preserve your dignity and quit today.