Sunday editorial: Barack Obama for president
Post-Dispatch photo by Robert Cohen
Nine Days before the Feb. 5 presidential primaries in Missouri and Illinois, this editorial page endorsed Barack Obama and John McCain in their respective races.
We did so enthusiastically. We wrote that either Mr. Obama’s message of hope or Mr. McCain’s independence and integrity offered America “the chance to turn the page on 28 years of contentious, greed-driven politics and move into a new era of possibility.”
Over the past nine months, Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has emerged as the only truly transformative candidate in the race. In the crucible that is a presidential campaign, his intellect, his temperament and equanimity under pressure consistently have been impressive. He has surrounded himself with smart, capable advisers who have helped him refine thorough, nuanced policy positions.
In a word, Mr. Obama has been presidential.
Meanwhile, Mr. McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, became the incredible shrinking man. He shrank from his principled stands in favor of a humane immigration policy. He shrank from his universal condemnation of torture and his condemnation of the politics of smear.
He even shrank from his own campaign slogan, “Country First,” by selecting the least qualified running mate since the Swedenborgian shipbuilder Arthur Sewall ran as William Jennings Bryan’s No. 2 in 1896.
In making political endorsements, this editorial page is guided first by the principles espoused by Joseph Pulitzer in The Post-Dispatch Platform printed daily at the top of this page. Then we consider questions of character, life experience and intellect, as well as specific policy and issue positions. Each member of the editorial board weighs in.
On all counts, the consensus was clear: Barack Obama of Illinois should be the next president of the United States.
We didn’t know nine months ago that before Election Day, America would face its greatest economic challenge since the Great Depression. The crisis on Wall Street is devastating, but it has offered voters a useful preview of how the two presidential candidates would respond to a crisis.
Very early on, Mr. Obama reached out to his impressive corps of economic advisers and developed a comprehensive set of recommendations for addressing the problems. He set them forth calmly and explained them carefully.
Mr. McCain, a longtime critic of government regulation, was late to recognize the threat. The chief economic adviser of his campaign initially was former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who had been one of the architects of banking deregulation. When the credit markets imploded, Mr. McCain lurched from one ineffectual grandstand play to another. He squandered the one clear advantage he had over Mr. Obama: experience.
Mr. McCain first was elected to Congress in 1982 when Mr. Obama was in his senior year at Columbia University. Yet the younger man’s intellectual curiosity and capacity — and, yes, also the skills he developed as a community organizer and his instincts as a political conciliator — more than compensate for his lack of more traditional Washington experience.
A presidency is defined less by what happens in the Oval Office than by what is done by the more than 3,000 men and women the president appoints to government office. Only 600 of them are subject to Senate approval. The rest serve at the pleasure of the president.
We have little doubt that Mr. Obama’s appointees would bring a level of competence, compassion and intellectual achievement to the executive branch that hasn’t been seen since the New Frontier. He has energized a new generation of Americans who would put the concept of service back in “public service.”
Consider that while Mr. McCain selected as his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a callow and shrill partisan, Mr. Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Mr. Biden’s 35-year Senate career has given him encyclopedic expertise on legislative and judicial issues, as well as foreign affairs.
The idea that 3,000 bright, dedicated and accomplished Americans would be joining the Obama administration to serve the public — as opposed to padding their resumés or shilling for the corporate interests they’re sworn to oversee — is reassuring. That they would be serving a president who actually would listen to them is staggering.
And the fact that Mr. Obama can explain his thoughts and policies in language that can instruct and inspire is exciting. Eloquence isn’t everything in a president, but it is not nothing, either.
Experience aside, the 25-year difference in the ages of Mr. McCain, 72, and Mr. Obama, 47, is important largely because Mr. Obama’s election would represent a generational shift. He would be the first chief executive in more than six decades whose worldview was not formed, at least in part, by the Cold War or Vietnam.
He sees the complicated world as it is today, not as a binary division between us and them, but as a kaleidoscope of shifting alliances and interests. As he often notes, he is the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, an internationalist who yet acknowledges that America is the only nation in the world in which someone of his distinctly modest background could rise as far as his talent, intellect and hard work would take him.
Given the damage that has been done to America’s moral standing in the world in the last eight years — by a preemptory war, a unilateralist foreign policy and by policies that have treated both the Geneva Conventions and our own Bill of Rights as optional — Mr. Obama’s election would help America reclaim the moral high ground.
It also must be said that Mr. Obama is right on the issues. He was right on the war in Iraq. He is right that all Americans deserve access to health care and right in his pragmatic approach to meeting that goal. He is right on tax policy, infrastructure investment, energy policy and environmental issues. He is right on American ideals.
He was right when he said in his remarkable speech in March in Philadelphia that “In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.”
John McCain has served his country well, but in the end, he may have wanted the presidency a little too much, so much that he has sacrificed some of the principles that made him a heroic figure in war and in peace. In every way possible, he has earned the right to retire.
Finally, only at this late point do we note that Barack Obama is an African-American. Because of who he is and how he has run his campaign, that fact has become almost incidental to most Americans. Instead, his countrymen are weighing his talents, his values and his beliefs, judging him not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.
That says something profound and good — about him as a candidate and about us as a nation.
Sarah “Abuse of Power” Palin isn’t helping the cause much either …
I think the editorial boards consensus opinion is spot on and glad to see it. There has been a long history of political zealots in both parties doing their best to polarize the voting public: one candidate has to be the good one and the other has to be the bad one. And usually this is done through a process of demonizing. And any reasoned conscious person has to ask whether or not this really helps and secures our democracy. I think not. About the most successful thing the McCain campaign has done has been to perpetuate the vitriolic ranting of a small group of voters who have little interest in accuracy and fairness, and exploit their ignorance. Evidence of this is clear in reading these blog comments. When faced with unreasoned accusations, how is one to respond? One really cannot address illogical thinking and fear mongering with logic and reason. That’s right - go ahead and demonize Obama: since you can’t talk about his policies or the real issues confronting America. Meanwhile many of McCain’s own flag waving supporters are so fanatical in their warped sensibilities, they are now booing their own candidate! How does this happen? Keep on rockin’ on the free world….
Scott,
But of course there is a big problem: Obama would not be given security clearance to work in a local Police Department because of his terrorist connections and yet the media wants to elect him President of the United States.
Don’t you notice the collective hysteria?
Louis Farrakhan calls Obama “the Messiah”! What does Louis Farrakhan see in Obama to call him “the Messiah”?
A question: who are we selling, rather giving away, our lives?
America, wake up!
Juan
You know the feeling you get when you’re reading a really good book and you just can’t wait to turn the page? That’s the way I feel about American History. Gone are the old grey men who served us well in their time, but their time has passed. Gone is the Berlin Wall, gone is the USSR, gone is Fidel Castro, gone are the last few remnants of spite and malice from Vietnam. While the country is still faced with monumental challenges, be it hate espousing religious zealots in the caves of Afghanistan, or the pervasive miasma of fear and doubt on the Wall Streets of the world, the citizens of the world are overwhelmingly on the march towards freedom, liberty, security, and equality. They cannot be forever constrained. My generation, the generation that produced poets who penned “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “Give Peace A Chance,” also issued Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson, and Sirhan Sirhan. We pointed towards the horizon, but didn’t have a clue how to get there. Now, for the first time in my life, I will be casting my vote for a presidential candidate who is younger than I am. I do so with confidence. It’s a good feeling. Maybe, just maybe this is the time. The page is turning…
Great column. I agree with the editorial board’s detailed reasoning for endorsing Sen. Obama.
Ok, Jmas,
why don’t we all break out our tinfoil hats and start analyzing all the symbols that the Obama campaign uses. Or lets start stringing together our own Octopus cabal type organization that for some reason didn’t control Bush and McCain, but chose a half black dude to represent. Considering that most people on this planet either seem to really hate Jews or Blacks or both it seems like that would be a horrible decision for a shadow organization to go with. Also Farakahn is a moron. Just cuz everybody has an opinion doesn’t make it special right. Also the sun in the circle, I think it means dawn, like the dawning of a new whatever… right. Or maybe it’s his old star system. Point is, you guys are grasping at very thin straws now and dancin around the issues. McCains son was on the board at Freddie and Fannie. Palin is in league with an independence movement that was backed by Iran, Palin hangs out with witch hunting conmen, Palin uses the power she wields as a Governor for personal vendettas. Most of all, I have yet to see Obama just sit back and keep his mouth closed when someone at a rally starts yellin epithets and how we need to kill the other candidate. Oh yes, it’s a completely different crowd at those rallies.
Lovecraft,
Has Farrakhan ever called a presidential candidate “the Messiah”?
Even the beauty of the electoral process is being destroyed by ACORN’s fraud.
America, beware of the night. It does not look like dawn to me, it looks like dusk.
The legitimate desire for change is being used by the opportunist, like the desire of knowledge that Eve had was used by the serpent to trick her.
Juan
Uhhh, Juan, Farrakahn doesn’t like white people, buddy. So far, at least according to my history classes, every candidate for that seat has been a white man. My Dad, who grew up during the times when a black child could be tied to a weight and thrown into the river by an angry white mob also has some reservations about whites. But Farrakahn’s opinion about the the nation are just as important as yours and mine. But thats about it its an opinion. And all this talk of messiahs and serpents is delving into the realm of myth anyway. The whole idea that someone would call someone a messiah should dismiss their argument. Serpents in the garden or serpents wearing suits and controlling us, we’ve always collectively had something against snakes.
And something else, Juan. I know that some people in this nation have always had their identity in tack. They’ve always had their Hope (Esperanza), but it’s time for blacks and Latinos and whites and Asians and everyone else to leave behind all those labels I just put out. You talk of symbols, well do your research and get back to me on the most powerful symbol that everyone keeps looking over in all this.
Thank you for this beautiful article. It has brightened my spirit. Of late I have noted a number of videos on youtube that have caused me to wonder what has happened to the America I knew. Being a child of the 50’s, living through Vietnam and “that Catholic” being elected President, I remember divisions in this country, but NEVER to the extent I have viewed recently. I pray that my greatest fears are not realized and that instead, my greatest hopes are realized. A bringing together of this country and its people.
When McCain was selected by the Republicans I thought, good, I will have someone of integrity to vote for. Then when Obama was selected, I again, thought, now I have two good choices.
After the selection of Ms. Palin, I saw the campaign of Senator McCain degenerate. As a former Republican I became ashamed that I had ever been associated with such a dismal party, let alone be a former elected official for the Republican party.
I thank Senator McCain for finally making a supportive comment of Senator Obama when one of his supporters made another untrue statement. I only wish it had not taken him so long to confront the wickedness of some.
I Pray the Lord God Bless will Bless our Country and Heal the rifts and hatred within our citizenry.
Juan,
Abraham Lincoln said the “empty barrel makes the most noise”. That statement was true in Lincoln’s time and it is true today.
I believe you are intellectually and morally dishonest as you do not speak from fact, only from your ideology. Your arguments are empty as they are not based upon fact, only smears from the right-wing.
You do, however, make a lot of empty noise.