To the editor:

To pre-empt criticism of President Bush during the election campaign, George Will on Jan. 12 reviewed “The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse” by Gregg Easterbrook. In Will’s view, the book explains why increased longevity, better health care and rising prosperity in America have left us unhappy.

The fault, it seems, lies in the media and their appetite for bad news, “gloomy interest groups,” our genes, material abundance, and “the cultivation of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, and the media.” Will predicts that during this election year, Democrats will try to “sow despondency by pointing to lead linings on all silver clouds.” Americans, he says, are becoming colorblind to silver.

Get out, George! Surely you don’t think the Democrats will complain about the failure of African-American males to enjoy increased longevity. Are we to believe a Democratic candidate would sink to mentioning that many Americans have no access to any health care, let alone better? As for rising prosperity, what Democratic demagogue would carp about such peripheral issues as high unemployment and homelessness?

You might as well ask us to believe the president’s State of the Union message will gild the war in Iraq by applauding bravery or defend his economic policies by praising high stock prices or distract us from fortress America by pointing to freedom or pretty clouds.

Colorblind? Think rose-colored glasses, George.

Paul Fairchild,

Lawrence