Why The Washington Post Op-ed Is So Dull.

• Author: McCarthy, Colman
• Position: Editorial pages

From the pulpit of a packed National Cathedral in Washington in late July, mourning orators offered fulgent farewells to Katharine Graham, the ruling power of The Washington Post since the mid-1960s. But one thing the eulogizers--dearest friend Henry Kissinger foremost among them--left unnoted is that Graham presided over one of the dullest op-ed pages in America. It is a sheet of numbing sameness: centrist or rightwing viewpoints, listless writing, and pro-establishment megaphonics. Most of it is produced by ensconced white males day after repetitive day, week after stodgy week. It is a wasted resource. For readers with a yen for a diversity of views or--not to be intellectually greedy--a desire for the offbeat, daring, boat-rocking, or witty, the Post's op-ed page is not the place to look.

The daughter of a lifelong Republican who denounced President Franklin Roosevelt's fiscal policies as irresponsible, Graham wrote in her memoir, "I was and am a centrist."

Such a claim is customarily put forward to create an image of impartiality, that one is agenda-free. Yet centrists are as prone to agenda-pushing as anyone else. In Graham's case, the bents were reflected in the Post's editorials. In the 1980s and 1990s, the paper supported aid to the contras, the nomination of Edwin Meese to be Attorney General, NAFTA, and U.S. military bombings in Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia. Supporters of those issues could rally left-of-center undecideds by saying, "Imagine that, the Post is on our side," when the reality was, "Naturally, the Post is on our side."

The Post tacks left only on the safe liberal issues. It opposes the death penalty. It punches Big Tobacco and the NRA. It favors civil liberties, AIDS research, curbing dogs in Georgetown, and similar toughies. Since the Watergate heydays--marked by the gritty editorial writing of Roger Wilkins and the courageous stewardship of editorial page editor Philip Geyelin--the Post has rarely found an editorial limb it dares go far out on.

In 1977, Katharine Graham explained her centrism: "Papers that want to serve and keep their readership cannot afford to be eccentric or extreme. As Walter Lippmann once remarked to me, a newspaper may be a little to the left of its community, or a little to the right, but it cannot move too far from the center of opinion without alienating its audience and losing readers of the paper--or the editorial page."

This proclamation came near the time that the Post became publicly traded. Shares sold for under $20. Post stock is now around $560 a share, the second richest after Berkshire Hathaway, the corporation of Graham financial mentor Warren Buffett. It also came shortly before Graham fired Geyelin, an open-minded editor who kept the op-ed page available to voices from all sides.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the Post's tightly controlled op-ed page mirrored the leanings of Katharine Graham: Be cautious about eccentrics and extremists but print the rightwing Novaks, Wills, and Krauthammers, and embrace the Kissingers and other insiders...