Today The Salt Lake Tribune launches a new online feature called Behind the Lines with Tribune cartoonist Pat Bagley and BYU economist Val Lambson.

Behind the Lines is an unusual addition to news commentary. Once a week Bagley or Lambson will pick one of Bagley's cartoons from the previous week and engage in some give and take on the issues it raises. There will also be a comment section for readers. Think of it as politically enhanced art criticism.

Here's the link to the blog: www.sltrib.com/cat/BTL

Bagley, the 30-plus-year Tribune veteran, you already know. Lambson, however, is a newcomer to political commentary, having spent his 30-year career as an economist teaching at various universities and publishing scholarly articles. He was a member of the initial Board of Scholars of the Utah-based Sutherland Institute, originally a platform for raising the profile of libertarian ideas.

Rather than a left-right, winner-take-all slugfest popular in some media, Behind the Lines will be a friendly conversation between two people who have achieved distinction in their respective fields. In fact, Bagley and Lambson are friends from way back. They both grew up Mormon in Oceanside, Calif., became Eagle Scouts together, graduated the same year from the same high school, and went on to serve LDS missions and graduate from Brigham Young University.

Both ended up in Utah, geographically separated by just 60 miles, but worlds apart politically.

In a preview of what to expect from Behind the Lines, Bagley and Lambson fill in the blanks on their new feature:

Bagley: When I discovered via Facebook that a friend I hadn't seen in 30 years was teaching economics at BYU, I was surprised, to say the least. The Val Lambson I used to engage in weighty political/philosophical discussions at age 15 was a socialist.

Lambson: Let's just say I was left of center. On the other hand, the Pat Bagley I knew was, well, right of center.

Bagley: The truth is I had a drawer full of "Nixon's the One" campaign paraphernalia and a deep loathing of welfare cheats.

Lambson: My campaign paraphernalia included a bumper sticker reading "Drop Nixon Not Bombs." Though too young to vote, I worked hard for George McGovern in 1972.

Bagley: Oceanside was not a swanky beach resort in the '60s. Downtown entertained U.S. Marines from adjacent Camp Pendleton with bars, tattoo parlors and a theater that played "The Sands of Iwo Jima" on a continuous loop. I don't know about hippies spitting on returning troops, but any long-hair who cluelessly wandered into downtown took his life in his hands. Our high school included surfers, Samoans, Chicanos, blacks, and children of Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. (They didn't make a big deal about it.)

Lambson: And there were a few Mormons, of which Pat and I were a wonky subset.

Bagley: My father was city planner, city manager and eventually three-term mayor. Politics was mother's milk in the Bagley household — conservative, Republican, mother's milk. I remember Dad complaining about government regulations requiring seat belts and how such meddling in the free market would soon make cars unaffordable.

Lambson: My dad was the choir director at Oceanside High School, where he also taught history. The son of a farmer who lost everything in the Great Depression, he almost believed FDR was the Messiah. At age 12 I watched the riotous 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention with my father, who left no doubt about who the good guys and the bad guys were.

Bagley: The final burnish to my conservative convictions was applied at BYU in the political science department. A diet of Friedrich Hayek, Leo Strauss and Ayn Rand — heroes of today's conservative movement — made me a dedicated neoconservative before neoconservatism was cool.

Lambson: At age 18 I was on a leftist trajectory. Two years as a missionary in Mexico City convinced me that something had to be done for the poor and that government was the only practical means.

Bagley: Years at The Tribune softened my rigid ideological outlook. Sitting in on editorial board meetings and hearing a wide range of candidates, lobbyists and community groups deliver well-reasoned arguments for their various causes helped me see that there are rarely black and white answers. By the Clinton presidency I was about as apolitical as a political cartoonist can be. I described myself as an equal opportunity offender.

Lambson: As we were catching up on 30 years, I reminded you that the last time we saw each other was at the BYU Library Special Collections in 1979. As was our habit, we got into a political discussion. You were excited about Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, still one of the most important pillars of modern conservative thought. It took me a few years to overcome my leftist baggage and put things together. When I did, I concluded that you and Hayek had been right all along. Now my question to you is: What happened?

Bagley: George W. Bush. But that's a long story that I'm sure we'll touch on as you dissect my cartoons in Behind the Lines and I defend them by accusing you of missing the point.

Lambson: I'm looking forward to it.