Robert J. Samuelson

The death Sunday of Robert J. Samuelson is a sad moment at the Sun. We’d known him in college, when he was president of the Harvard Crimson. He was already finding his voice as a columnist who could stand apart. His was a principled voice on a campus in tumult. We were in touch only occasionally over the years, but when he emerged as a columnist of the Washington Post Writers Group, we leapt at the chance to carry his columns in the Sun.We read about his death in a posting by our founding managing editor, Ira Stoll, at his substack “The Editors.” Mr. Stoll, himself a former president of the Crimson, went back to re-read some of Samuelson’s long-ago columns and was struck at how well they held up. He admired their “independence of mind,” their attention “to ‘dull but important’ issues,” and their ability to make the issues “less dull than they would be in less skillful journalistic hands.”Mr. Stoll quotes Samuelson from 2005: “What’s discouraging is that, along with most Republicans and Democrats, many ‘experts’ and pundits also evade the hard questions. Their purpose is mainly to condemn or cheer Mr. Bush. The debate we need involves generational responsibility and obligation. Anyone who examines the outlook must conclude that, even allowing for uncertainties, both Social Security and Medicare benefits will have to be cut.”Also in 2005, Samuelson wrote of the controversy over the remarks of Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, on gender differences. Let someone allude to these differences, Samuelson wrote, “particularly a man in a way possibly unfavorable to women, and he’ll get slammed by the sledgehammer of political correctness. He’ll be denounced as sexist, reactionary, and insensitive. Too bad. The differences need to be discussed. …”Or Samuelson on the federal budget: “Americans dislike deficits but dislike them less than the alternatives — higher taxes or lower spending. There’s a quiet clamor for hypocrisy and deception; and pragmatic politicians respond with massive borrowing schemes that seem to promise something for nothing.” Another column described how the “obsessive drive to improve profits, though cold-blooded, also creates often-overlooked social benefits.”One of Mr. Stoll’s favorite Samuelson columns was from 2019. Mr. Stoll calls it a sensible response to an overly negative column from David Brooks. “You seem disappointed that we haven’t arrived in some Garden of Eden paradise where almost everyone is happy, fulfilled, responsible and respected. I yearn for this as well, but I have reconciled myself to the inevitability of imperfection….” It happens to the best of them.

Robert J. Samuelson

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