Blinded by the Light Johnnie B. Watson, who was elected interim schools superintendent Monday night, may turn out admirably, but his election has already sparked some complaining on the part of school board members and some gloomy reflections by them on the nature of What-Might-Have-Been. It should be noted that none of this is the fault of Watson, a well-credentialed educational specialist who has been serving as chairman of the Rhodes College Department of Education. All the griping is rather at the expense of the media, who are blamed for influencing the outcome by publicizing the results of an official Board meeting. What happened was that Jane Walters, the former Craigmont High principal and state Education Commissioner and clearly another highly qualified candidate, took her name out of the running after The Commercial Appeal, in reporting on a committee meeting involving five board members, published the names -- her own, Watson's, and former interim superintendent Ray Holt's -- of the three leading contenders decided on by the committee. Somehow the publicity made Walters diffident about the job. "These people are my friends," she said, adding, "I don't care to have my name bandied around. That's just not me." Whereupon she withdrew from the running. Board member Bill Todd later commented, "That's why I have a problem with the Sunshine laws. . . .We want to protect those people whose names come out. Professional people don't want their names batted around." With all due respect to both Walters and Todd, both of whom we admire: Just what are they talking about? Not only does the public have what Todd conceded was a "right to know" about the deliberations of an elected body as it decides whom to name to what is arguably the most important of all public positions, but -- not to overstress the obvious -- we live in a system which vets its leaders in the harsh light of publicity and does so on purpose. It is by now axiomatic that the long and grueling means by which we select our presidents ensures that we end up with people who won't fail the Harry Truman Test. To wit: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Self-government is, by its very nature, stressful. It is equally important, at the local level, that whoever holds so controversial and critical a job as that of schools superintendent should be desensitized enough not only to take a little heat but to stand a great deal of policy disagreement and verbal back-and-forth as well. Whatever the virtues of the now departed Gerry House, her tenure as superintendent was not characterized by an openness to the kind of public give-and-take that, however punishing and even wounding it might have become, could have helped her develop hard, practical solutions to the unsolved problems -- mainly poor student achievement scores -- she left behind. We understand all the reasons why a person might become squeamish about the media and its undoubted intrusiveness in the public arena, but that is the way things are, necessarily so, in a democracy. We frankly don't understand why Walters, who acquitted herself well in the klieg- light atmosphere of state government in Nashville, should have blinked at a little local sunshine. And we are glad that Watson didn't.