The Sun Journal has blinders on (Oct. 27). What else accounts for its trumpeting George Bush as “the only choice”? What else accounts for the reduction of the campaigns to bean-counting and narrow self-interest? What else accounts for the disregard of Bush’s record, his blatant inadequacies as a leader and a president?

Do the editors read their own paper?

I wonder.

The cost-benefit language of the editorial reveals a limited view, but let’s stay with it for the moment. Bush’s rush to judgment in Iraq, unsupportable and unsupported, his apocalyptic vision of foreign policy, his substitution of rhetoric for diplomacy, his inability to partner with our historic allies – all these have cost thousands of lives and invaluable American credibility.

Domestically, Bush’s policies have left us with a record budget deficit, with diminished federal support for states (Where did the impetus for the tax-cap proposal come from, anyway?), with escalating health care costs and unfunded educational mandates devoted to testing rather than teaching.

All this without mentioning the costs to our democracy of the erosion of civil liberties and the increase in poverty and families living on the edge. By any account, Bush’s term has been an extremely expensive one.

One expects analysis on the editorial page, not more spin. George Bush doesn’t read the newspaper, but many of us do. We deserve better from the Sun Journal.

Ellen Grunblatt, Jay

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