By the The Missouri Post Dispatch Editorial Board
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 resumes 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 world view 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 pre-emptive 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.
