Contrasting Obama and Romney

Marc Fisher’s broad point about the distrust and skepticism of the American electorate [“We can’t handle the truth,” Outlook, July 22] is well taken.

However, The Post unfortunately contributed to the distortion of our political discourse by printing with the article illustrations that equate the controversy over President Obama’s birth certificate with Mitt Romney’s failure to release sufficient tax return information.

The manufactured clamor about the birth certificate was never based in fact but was trumped up by prejudice and fear-mongering. On the other hand, the issue of Romney’s personal tax returns is directly relevant to the current campaign. Romney is running on his financial acumen and promises to strengthen the American economy. His participation as a fiscal citizen of our country has a direct bearing on the upcoming election.

Amy Golen, Bethesda

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Regarding the July 25 front-page article “Romney promises a foreign policy shift”:

Your reporters summarized Mitt Romney’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, then contrasted the speech with President Obama’s “more calculated realist approach to diplomacy.”

To interpret Romney’s approach as, in essence, less of a calculated and realist approach is to morph into commentary that should be reserved for readers or writers in your opinion pages.

One news channel says it reports and lets the viewers decide. In this instance, it seems your reporters have said, “We’ve reported, now we’ll let you know what we’ve decided.”

Danny Lynch, Sterling