Will's views are too useful to ignore.

Disclose as necessary, then judge arguments on their merits.

Maybe I'm ethically obtuse or a blind contrarian, but I have a different response to Van Cavett's concern about George Will's spousal connection with the Dole camp.

1.) It seems to me possible for someone to hold and express opinions independently of the interests of one's spouse. I'm thinking of James Carville and Mary Matalin, Democrat and Republican campaign strategists and now a married couple.

2.) It also seems possible to me that George and his wife may be united in bliss that is intellectual as well as matrimonial, that their attraction is based to some degree on similar political views.

3.) We are talking about opinion writing here, not reporting. Who knows where columnists get their opinions? We're not obliged to take any of them on faith; they must present good arguments to back them up. If their arguments don't ring true to us, we can dismiss them.

Yes, one does tend to rely to some degree on a columnist's judgments, which might well be colored by such connections, but that doesn't seem to me to be necessarily fatal to a column.

4.) It's certainly worth noting in some way that Will has close ties to the Dole camp. For that reason, I would probably have preferred to run the column Van cited, to get that information to the public. It might be worth appending an editor's note to future columns, if that seems relevant, to alert readers to the circumstance.

5.) Will cannot avoid dealing with the Republican campaign and still be a Washington columnist. Nothing is more central to what he does. His views are usually thoughtful and coherent and interesting - and too useful as a sounding board on national politics for him to pass on commenting on presidential election issues and still be doing his job by his readers.

RELATED ARTICLE: Let readers judge for themselves

I'll join Phineas Fiske's side of the George Will debate. I think disclosure is important so that readers know what influences might be shaping a columnist's thought. But beyond that, let readers judge of themselves the value of the column.

The fact that Will's wife works for Dole is nothing new. That's been reported several times. The fact that Will is close to various other Republican figures is nothing new.

We should make these connections clear to our readers whatever way seems appropriate, then glean whatever insights we can from the columns.

We have a broader problem here, though. When editorial sections rely too heavily on the insights of those intimately connected to the powers-that-be, the range of opinion gets far too narrow. Use Will, but maybe also use a neighborhood activist or union organizer or iconoclastic professor - making clear their interests as well.

- Phil Haslanger

NCEW member Phil Haslanger is editorial page editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wis.

NCEW member Phineas Fiske is assistant editor of the editorial pages at Newsday in Melville, N.Y.