Just as we were sitting down to tap out an editorial on the homestretch of the presidential campaign, word reached us of the death of George Melloan. He had spent 54 years on the Wall Street Journal, including a long stretch as deputy editor of its editorial page. It included the climactic years of the Cold War, when we had the honor and joy of being edited by Melloan. He was one of the greatest newspapermen of his, or any, time.
We first met Melloan in the early 1970s, when we were a reporter in the Journal’s Detroit bureau. We’d gone to see him in New York about writing a piece on the illogic of needing an act of Congress to make a small adjustment in the automotive exhaust standards. The first thing that struck us about him was how large his forehead was. It must, we later concluded, have been needed to house his incredible brain.
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