Intelligent Commentary or a Stupid Question?

Re: “Is He a Dope?” editorial, Oct. 7:

You said what has needed to be said all along!

Sue Alexander

Canoga Park

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The headline and tone of the editorial bespeak a sense of superiority that both interferes with the substantive point The Times seeks to make about the failures of President Bush and, worse still, invites a further coarsening of the important political debate the country should be having.

There is no reason for one of the leading newspapers in the world to engage in name-calling when there is so much of substance to criticize and so substantive a way to do it.

The Times has no evidence regarding the level of intelligence of President Bush, his capacity for abstract thought or how he makes decisions. It shouldn’t pretend that it does.

Rather, The Times should advocate with vigor the need for relief from the policy misjudgments that are pandemic in this administration and the related necessity of the election of a new president.

Bert H. Deixler

Los Angeles

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Is he a dope? This is the title of an editorial in a cosmopolitan city in the United States, talking about the president? Has the L.A. Times decided to strive for the reputation of being on the lowest rung of the major elite-media ladder, a simple-minded and niggardly propaganda machine?

Jeremiah Donohue

Agoura Hills

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It’s about time a responsible paper asked this in print.

Mark Whitney Garrett

Maitland, Fla.