Can’t we just get back to the good old days?”

I’m still young enough for it to be funny when I complain about how old I’m getting. And since I’m of the generation that can’t remember a time without personal computers, I can’t bear personal witness to the fact that the “old days” were indeed good.

Still, as a former history major, I can appreciate a good look back, and so do many of the writers here on the Roundtable page.

A couple letters from last week gave a hearty amen to the Barney Fife method of arming local police: an empty gun and a bullet stored in the shirt pocket. “In Barney’s time, people respected the law,” one writer observed. “Officers tried to help; they didn’t look forward to arrests.”

This statement implies, of course, that “these days” people do not respect the law and officers can’t wait to cuff the next bystander who is minding his own business. Evidently police were just better back then, and, sadly, those days are gone.

Another one of our writers mused, “Fifty years ago when political hopefuls campaigned with newspaper ads, radio and from the back of a rented train, if they could afford it, people came to know what the candidate stood for. It didn’t take repetitions ad nauseam to tell the voting public what they stood for and intended to do.”

It is tempting for us who deal in public policy discussion to search for a time when things were how we want them to be: if we only do the same things they did then, we will achieve the peace, plenty and harmony that then reigned. In an extreme case of nostalgic policy-making, our police would end up with the equivalent of an empty gun and a pocket bullet when they encounter hostiles with semi-automatic weapons.

In more than one way, though, “Barney’s time” never existed. He is a fictional (albeit hilarious) character on a television show from the same period as other such realistic shows as “Leave it to Beaver” and “My Favorite Martian.” Looking to ‘60s script writers for principles of police oversight is a little like basing analysis of the Columbia disaster on slow-motion crash scenes from “Star Trek.”

There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia for times that we used to enjoy. But looking upon “way back when” as a golden age which, if we could only return to it, would solve today’s problems, is a dangerous and futile standpoint. Scandal, corruption and hypocrisy trailed after Warren Harding and Lyndon Johnson, too – and supposedly voters knew “what they stood for and intended to do.”

Appealing to an earlier and better – or, by contrast, a future and dimmer – time is probably effective in swaying readers emotionally. When it comes to solutions, however, it is more helpful to adapt nonfictional evidence of what has (and hasn’t) worked to address the present need.

Moreover, the idea that everything used to be better and will get worse is simply untrue. Do we really wish for the social climate of the ‘60s, the Great Depression’s standard of living or the disfranchisement of women and minorities, which has only recently begun to mend? Wouldn’t most of us agree that e-mail is the most convenient and timely way to send a letter to the editor about, say, the list of Gregoire campaign donors – which is available at a public information Web site?

That brings me to the other reason I am urging openness to new ideas. Starting today, I’ll be weighing in once a month here on the letters page. In addition to looking at letters through a rhetorical lens, future columns will include statistics on what kinds of letters we’re receiving and why some of them haven’t seen print.

Hopefully a glimpse at the letters selection and publication process will encourage even more writers to submit letters of interest and insight. The more contributors we hear from, the more valuable the Roundtable will be for readers and writers alike.

But putting those statistics together would sure be easier if the letters all came USPS like they did in the good old days.