Below is yesterday's presidential endorsement from The Record newspaper in
Stockton, California.
The last time The Record endorsed a Democrat for president was in 1936, when
it went for Franklin D. Roosevelt.
CHOICE IS CLEAR: OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT
Barack Obama is our choice for president of the United States.
He has demonstrated time and again he can think on his feet. More
importantly, he has demonstrated he will think things through, seek advice
and actually listen to it.
Obama is a gifted speaker. But in addition to his smarts and energy,
possibly his greatest gift is his ability to inspire.
For eight years, American politics has been marked by smears, fears and
greed. For too long, we've practiced partisanship in Washington, not
politics. The result is a cynicism every bit as deep as that which infected
the nation when Richard Nixon was shamed from office and when Bill Clinton
brought shame to the office.
This must end, but John McCain can't do it. He can't inspire, nor can he
really break from a past that is breaking this nation.
McCain is an American hero, and he has served this country in the Senate
with determination. He has gone against his party, but the fact is his ties
to the Bush administration and its policies are deep. Americans know we
cannot keep going down this path.
McCain, who has voted consistently for deregulation, started off two weeks
ago declaring the U.S. economy fundamentally sound but ended the week
sounding like a populist. Who is he really?
He tends to shoot from the hip and go on gut instinct. The nation cannot go
through four more years of literally and figuratively shooting now and
asking questions later.
But the fact is, we worry he won't have four years. If elected, at 72, he
would be the oldest incoming president in U.S. history. He's in good health
now, we're told, although he has withheld most of his medical records. That
means Gov. Sarah Palin could very well become president.
And that brings us to McCain's most troubling trait: his judgment.
While praiseworthy for putting the first woman on a major-party presidential
ticket since Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, his selection of Palin as a running
mate was appalling. The first-term governor is clearly not experienced
enough to serve as vice president or president if required. Her lack of
knowledge is being covered up by keeping her away from questioning reporters
and doing interviews only with those considered friendly to her views.
We're not suggesting Obama is without faults. He, like McCain, has
demonstrated a marked lack of knowledge in recent days about the financial
mess facing this nation.
But unlike McCain, who is trying to position himself as a born-again
regulator, Obama would increase the oversight of our markets and demand
accountability. He would actually put regulators in the oversight agencies
that were systematically dismantled by the Bush administration.
While the blame doesn't all accrue to the Bush administration, the past
eight years have been marked by looking the other way. McCain aided and
abetted that behavior.
Republicans have tried repeatedly to paint Obama as an elitist. Hardly. He
grew up in a single-parent home and, by the sheer force of his desire and
cerebral horsepower, ended up at Harvard Law School, where he became the
first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.
He could have gone for the money. He didn't. He went to Chicago, where he
worked to give a voice to those who didn't have one.
That's hardly the mark of an elitist.
He hasn't lost touch with regular people, whereas McCain doesn't even know
how many homes he owns.
Obama rose quickly through the Illinois Legislature and propelled himself
into the U.S. Senate.
After winning the Democratic nomination against a large and highly
experienced field of candidates, Obama picked one of them, Joe Biden, as his
running mate. Biden brings to the ticket the vast foreign affairs experience
and knowledge that Obama lacks.
Obama has been accused of being an empty suit, all talk and no action.
There's no "there" there, his detractors say.
The charge is no more credible than that of him being an elitist.
Obama can inspire, and our nation desperately needs an inspirational leader..
And he does not carry the deep scars of Vietnam, as do many of McCain's
generation.
He offers hope. A new way of doing business. And a belief that our system of
government can be made to work.
He's the clear choice.
The Republicans have nothing
to run on this year. What with
record federal deficits, $9 trillion in total debt, high gas prices, a failed
energy policy, no action on global warming, a housing crisis, the highest
unemployment rate in five years, nearly 50 million without health insurance and
another 50 million underinsured, poverty levels rising, the middle class
squeezed, a “casino” economy that benefits wealthy speculators, an
overstretched military, an endless occupation of Iraq, a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan
as bin Laden remains free, underperforming schools, lobbyist scandals and the
trashing of our Constitution.
That’s really putting
“country first.”
Now that it’s an election
year, what ever happened to Ronald Reagan’s measuring stick: “Are you better off than you were four
years ago?”
Of course, the Republicans
dare not ask that question. They
dare not mention “George Bush” or “Dick Cheney” at their own convention.
How to win? How do they always do it? With smoke and mirrors. Fear and smear. The politics of distraction.
If Barack Obama supports a
bill to allow age-appropriate education to protect children from predators, the McCain camp runs a despicable ad accusing him of
pushing sex education on kindergarteners.
If Barack Obama calls McCain’s
economic policy “putting lipstick on a pig,” the McCain camp accuses him of
calling Sarah Palin a pig. Even though McCain used this same
common phrase to describe Hillary Clinton’s push for universal healthcare.
You thought the lies they
spun night after night in St. Paul were bad? That was just the warm-up.
Day after day, Sarah Palin
claims she was against the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Of course, she was for it (before she was against it). In fact, she was the Queen of Pork,
bringing home more earmarks for Alaska per capita than any other governor in
the country. Now she is packaged as the great reformer. Who could do this but the Karl Rove
Republicans? The folks who, in
2004, convinced 55 million Americans that a man who dodged service in Vietnam
was more fit to be commander-in-chief than a man who won two Purple Hearts
there.
Today, conservative columnist
Andrew Sullivan wrote:
“For me, this surreal moment - like the entire
surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack
Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I
always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When
he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable
sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say
so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in, and thereby enable, the
mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?
So far, he has let us all down. My guess
is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever
respect I once had for him.
On core moral issues, where
this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil,
he chose evil.
When he knew that George W.
Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld
quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry
in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put
country first. He put party first and his own career first — ahead of what he
knew was best for the country.”
John McCain may win the White
House. But it will be a victory
without honor. It will lead to
more failed policy in Washington, more cynicism, more of – the same.
One thing is certain: John McCain and Sarah Palin are running
“the campaign to nowhere.”
© 2008