This week a reader sent us a letter taking issue with our editorial in the Sept. 11 edition, which commented on the reaction by some to the speech President Obama planned to give that week to students across the country. One thing that struck us in the letter was the notion about how things have “always” been.

Our editorial reflected on a time when people’s reaction to a president was different than it is today—not to this president, but to any president. We observed that, today, the out-of-power political party demands equal time to rebut presidential addresses. That observation was juxtaposed against memory of a time when that was not the case.

The letter stated, “The ‘out-of-power political party’ has always had equal time to rebut presidential addresses …”

Which is where the concept of “always” comes in.

We often assume that things we’ve experienced in our lifetimes represent the way things have “always” been—period. No ifs, ands, or buts. Always—forever. Sometimes this kind of absolute keeps us from reflecting on where we are, how and why we got here, and whether or not it’s a good place to be.

In this writer’s lifetime—which started just after the end of World War II—the out-of-power political party did not always get equal air time to directly and immediately rebut presidential addresses.

And the vitriolic criticism directed at the president—this one, the last one, and the one before that—was not always part of the mainstream news. That’s not to say people didn’t criticize the president and other political leaders then; it just didn’t seem to have the almost-sport status that it does today. I recall watching the Huntley-Brinkley Report with my grandparents in the 1950s and 1960s on their small black-and-white TV, but I don’t recall seeing large portions of the broadcasts devoted to discussing the president’s approval rating and speculation about whether it was headed up or down.

Our Sept. 11 editorial was not a comment in favor of one political party or another. It was an observation that things have not always been this way, with regard to how the citizenry views the office of the president of the United States. And we wonder if that’s a good place to be.

Not to throw around another absolute, but—parents I knew of then would never have kept their children from viewing a presidential address in school, although they might have had plenty to say about it around the dinner table afterward. Would shielding us from opportunities like this in the name of political protest have been a better approach then, or did dinnertime discussion of controversial issues provide a better opportunity for valuable teachable moments?

At this point, pondering this is “Monday-morning quarterbacking.” No one I knew ever had the opportunity to hear a live presidential address—in person or broadcast via the Web.