The Express-Times endorses Barack Obama for president over John McCain
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Express-times endorsement
A riddle for our times: Most Americans agree we are confronted with a historic choice in this election, one that will determine whether we continue climbing the mountain or fall off the precipice, with dire consequences. Yet the focus for many voters in this campaign is whether the mud being slung at Barack Obama will find a toehold, and thus provide the opening to destroy his presidential ambitions.
This type of campaigning should be a source of national embarrassment, especially in times of crisis. We can only hope that voters recognize it as such -- and return their focus to the issues and leadership potential of Obama and John McCain.
But frankly, it's hard to get to a place where the campaign noise doesn't seep in and interfere with clear thinking. In its deliberations, The Express-Times editorial board found two things that should be marginal concerns kept coming up as make-or-break issues. And they added plenty of heat to the discussion.
-- McCain's choice of Sarah Palin for a running mate seems as shockingly amateurish and ill-advised today as it was in August. Nothing that has happened on the campaign trail has changed this.
-- The spirit of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove seems to be the energizing force of the McCain/Palin Express, and it's the opposite of straight talk. Slimy campaigning is headed for another all-time high. While the nation is seeking guidance on economic and national defense problems of momentous proportion, this election seems to hinge on the guilt-by-association grenades that Republicans keep lobbing up, hoping to bring down Obama.
If this is a manual for how a McCain/Palin partnership would guide the nation out of a morass, we'd opt for Bob Barr or Ralph Nader first. Their campaigns look like beacons of integrity in comparison.
It's depressing to have to shape an editorial endorsement in these terms, given McCain's sacrifice in service to the country and his lengthy record in the U.S. Senate. Those experiences and accomplishments still speak loudly, but again -- it's the distracting noise the Republicans are generating that is blunting, even mocking, their claim to power.
Obama does not win this by default. He wins The Express-Times' endorsement because of his platform, because he has demonstrated a cool head in troubled times, because he inspires confidence and because he is conducting an above-board campaign.
The next president isn't going to be able to deliver on much of anything that requires new spending. He will have to be a deft, recession-fighting strategist, to avoid being this century's Herbert Hoover. He must end the Iraq war. Obama has the firmer timeline and commitment on this.
The Wall Street/credit crisis has parents in both parties. Anyone who points solely to too-easy mortgages, corporate greed or congressional misregulation isn't seeing the big picture. The pressing need now is to keep the economy from imploding and guide it back to stability, whether by a firm hand of intervention by the president and treasury secretary, or another tack. Obama's vision for new programs is ambitious and no doubt will have to be scaled back, but his tax plan is fairer than McCain's for average Americans, and more important, it shucks the 20th-century conceit that we can tax-cut our way out of spiraling debt.
We can't state this forcefully enough: The continued padding of the federal debt will bankrupt every good idea in every campaign from here on out. It will impoverish generations whose idea of the American dream is that simply working harder will guarantee a better life for our kids and grandkids. This election is a watershed event in our history as a people and as a government capable of extending individual freedoms and acting as a guardian of peace around the globe.
We've gotten this far without mentioning George W. Bush and his two terms:
A contested election. 9/11. A war started on bad information. Katrina. The outing of a CIA agent. Torture of enemy combatants. Government eavesdropping on phone calls. Swift-boating. A budget surplus transformed into unprecedented deficits. Diminished respect, even contempt, from our allies around the world. A myopic view of globalization shrouded by nationalism, ensuring that the U.S. will be less competitive in energy production and development of markets.
That's the Bush legacy. Only one candidate is making a credible case to reverse it. And it's not just economic stats, military force and remedial legislation that will fuel an American turnaround. It will require something that begins melting the cynicism that breeds contempt for our leaders. Obama has that "something." His critics see it as a charm and guile that masks inexperience. We see it as a calm, rational, intelligent approach to campaigning and governing that hasn't been seen around these parts lately.
We hope, too, that Americans will look past race as a reason to support or oppose any candidate, but this is a little naïve. Racism is a bubbling undercurrent that occasionally breaks the surface in presidential events and discussions, almost always as a latent doubt that anyone other than a white person is qualified to run the country.
It's time to prove that belief naïve. And outdated.
And wrong.
The way to do it is to choose the candidate who'll draw on his own strengths and incite the passions of others to move us beyond, and begin to repair, the damage inflicted upon us.
That's Obama.
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