Verrrrrry interesting!
Senators Barack Obama and John McCain have been endorsed by The Boston Globe editorial board ahead of the first-in-the-nation presidential primary on Jan. 8 in New Hampshire.
The board wrote that Obama, the Illinois Democrat, fulfills America’s need for “a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world,” and that McCain, the Arizona Republican, “has done more than his share to transcend partisanship and promote an honest discussion of the problems facing the United States.”
The Globe published excerpts from the editorials, which will appear in tomorrow’s paper. Here are the excerpts that are now on boston.com.
The most sobering challenges that face this country – terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics – are global. America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Barack Obama has this understanding at his core. The Globe endorses his candidacy in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary Jan. 8.
Many have remarked on Obama’s extraordinary biography: that he is the biracial son of a father from Kenya and a mother who had him at 18; that he was raised in the dynamic, multi-ethnic cultures of Hawaii and Indonesia; that he went from being president of the Harvard Law Review to the gritty and often thankless work of community organizing in Chicago; that, at 46, he would be the first post-baby-boom president.
It is true that all the other Democratic contenders have more conventional resumes, and have spent more time in Washington. But that exposure has tended to give them a sense of government’s constraints. Obama is more open to its possibilities.
In the last two presidential campaigns, Republicans scraped out victories by pressing just enough buttons and mobilizing just enough voters. But such wins breed political polarization and deprive a president of the political capital needed to ask Americans to sacrifice in difficult times.
The antidote to such a toxic political approach is John McCain. The iconoclastic senator from Arizona has earned his reputation for straight talk by actually leveling with voters, even at significant political expense. The Globe endorses his bid in the New Hampshire Republican primary.
McCain’s views differ from those of this editorial page in a variety of ways. Yet McCain’s honesty has served him well. As a lawmaker and as a candidate, he has done more than his share to transcend partisanship and promote an honest discussion of the problems facing the United States. He deserves the opportunity to represent his party in November’s election.
UPDATE: And, in other endorsement news, the Des Moines Register has decided to back Hillary Clinton. And McCain.
So McCain is wrong, but honest? Vote for him?
Just out, the Des Moines Register announces their caucus endorsements.
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p>John McCain and Hillary Clinton.
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p>The Clinton one blows my mind. It is very rare for the Reg to go for an establishment or front-runner type…they usually prefer the cerebral laggard. Sez them:
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p>Can’t help but wonder if David Yepsen’s problem with Obama on caucus eligbility may have removed him from competition. Combined with the first-ever caucus endorsement of Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell, Obama just hit a brick wall in Iowa.
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p>What I don’t say here, I say here.
Doesn’t make any sense to me. He’s currently tied for 5th with Ron Paul.
http://www.realclearpolitics.c…
The Reg has a history of dipping into the lower poll echelons to find someone to favor with an endorsement (1984-Mondale, 1992-Simon, 2000-Bradley, 2004-Edwards). A good history from MSNBC on their method.
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p>I can’t find their 2000 GOP endorsement. Anyone?
McCain is rising again…headed for a top 3 in Iowa and NH.
Close but no cigar isn’t going to cut the mustard, if you catch my drift.
McCain could do better in SC this time around if nobody spreads lies about him fathering a black child.
In New Hampshire: http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…
The calls seem to be about McCain’s record.
He’s got the Minutemen on his side and other super-Freepers. My guess: it’s only a matter of time.
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p>Mark
Right, because they are that petty in Iowa and Hillary Clinton’s experience and abilities do not amount to anything. What woman over the age of 35 hasn’t heard that one before? Hmmmmmmmm….
I’m not sure why wanting to preserve the integrity of the Iowa caucus is “petty” and I’m not sure where I said anything about Hillary’s experience and abilities not amounting to anything. You’re seeing what you want to see here, and it doesn’t match up to what I’ve said about Hillary for quite some time now.
The most sobering challenges that face this country – terrorism.
If these delusionals don’t stop with that crap then I will use my engineering skills.
give sobriety a bad name.
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p>Mark
I’ve decided never to doubt my instincts again, after someone told me in December 2005 that Deval was going nowhere, and I was pretty sure he was going to be governor.
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p>Anyway, that’s it. She’s not as charismatic as either Obama or Edwards (although she’s definitely got some); and as Ezra describes, her reasons for why this is her historical moment are just not all that compelling without her supposed ass-kicking/name-taking ability. (I welcome rebuttals.)
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p>The thing that really broke the camel’s back for me and Hillary was the Iran NIE. It just pulled the rug out from under her argument of “experience” — again — and showed that her excessive hawkishness is just born of bad, even cowardly, judgment. She’s covering the wrong bases. Enough.
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p>BTW: Here’s a more realistic reason for Obama’s supposed “momentum”, Hillary’s campaign “stalling”, even for his “sluggishness” back in October: The guy’s good. He’s charismatic and smart as hell. Hardly anyone was paying attention until December.
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p>BTW, remember that John Edwards was lighting up the respond-o-meters and electrodes attached to Frank Luntz’s focus groupers on Thursday. They loved him. And that’s because he’s good, too.
serving less than a full Senate term in Washington, D.C. and eating at the International House of Pancakes in Chicago.
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p>Obama continues to proclaim that Democrats should vote their hopes and not their fears. While I appreciate the lofty idealism behind Obama’s political rhetoric, we are living in a post-9/11 age of anxiety marked by the Iraq war, the the threats of nuclear proliferation to rogue states like Iran, international terrorism, and the cultural and political challenge posed by Islamic fundamentalism.
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p>Moreover, Americans presently have legitamite fears of an impending recession, rising unemployment, the horrendous family dislocations and economic hardships spawned by the home mortgage foreclosure crisis, and now the new headache of inflation worries sparked by a November 0.8% increase in the consumer price index.
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p>The complex, daunting challenges that will be left by the Bush/Cheney regime mean that the United States can ill-afford the luxury of on-the-job presidential training. I am supremely confident Hillary and Bill Clinton will be ready, willing, and able to meet all of the responsibilities of the job on Day 1 in office, even if I am uneasy about their incrementalist approach to health care reform and other domestic policies.
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p>Obama’s lack of any meaningful excutive experience and his limited professional experience overall make it likely that an Obama adminstration would experience similar fitful stops and starts which have plagued Governor Patrick’s first year in office. Unfortunately, the presence of determined national Republican political opposition and the overwhelming nature of the difficulties facing the next President will not afford either Obama or the Clintons, in contrast to Gov. Patrick, the luxury of multiple do-overs.
…Bill will just send Sandy Berger into the National Archives to destroy the evidence.
Fear and smear.
Eddie, watch and learn. This is Obama in 2002:
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p>Compare this to any of the pro-war rah-rah (gosh-I’m-conflicted-and-soulful) rah-rah from Bill, Hillary, and many others back then.
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p>I’ll take judgment, thanks so much. International House of Pancakes, indeed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
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However, the final vote was 76-22. I can’t really blame Obama for not bothering to be there, since passage wasn’t in doubt. I’d be interested to know what he said about it running up to the vote.
He has served far more time in elected office than eitehr Senator Clinton or Edwards, served more time in the IL State Senate than Lincoln and as much time as Senators Kennedy or Harding in the US Senate.
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p>Furthermore he has had 19 years as a community organizer so he knows and understands how to bring different competing groups together to work on consensus goals, something Hillary has not demonstrated considering her work on Hillarycare was a failure and her career in the Senate has not been particularly distinguished. Name one great initiative she sponsored? Other than the pro-Iran War bill Lieberman (a McCain supporter now) put forward or co-sponsoring the Iraq War resolution I see little initiative. Obama on the contrary has gotten several Iraq War resolutions passed, the Obama-Lugar counter proliferation (the real terrorist threat) initiative, and various educational bills and proposals.
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p>He also was a law professor, something nobody in the MSM talks about, and has a very good idea of what a good supreme court justice is and I am very confident he would appoint great people to the bench. He lived in a Muslim country something I find very important, he has travelled extensively to Africa and the Middle East on his own and not as part of an official group to see what tis really like on the ground. He and Dick Lugar saw firsthand Russian nuclear sites and how unsecure they are. Hillary’s foreign policy experience is limited to hosting State Dinners and a brief term on the Foreign Relations committee where she mainly made bellicose statements about Iraq and Iran.
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p>Lastly its his judgement and his ability to take on unpopular but just causes. He spoke out against the war when Hillary, the majority of Congressional Dems, and to wit the majority of the country were gung ho about it. He spoke out against CIA Torture and Waterboarding when Nancy Pelosi had no objections to it. He has told GM auto workers we need tougher CAFE standards, elderly voters we need to reform Social Security, and HMOs that their days will be numbered. Hillary Clinton follows the polls much like her husband, and this will lead to a mediocre Presidency that will not take the great chances or have the grand vision we need in this dark times.
Your unconvincing screed about Obama’s professional qualifications to be President only highlights the doubts harbored by many whether the man “is up for the job.”
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p>If Obama cannot allay today’s legitamite questions about his lack of relevant EXECUTIVE and MANAGERIAL experience and his limited professional background, wait until the fall ’08 campaign when an “October surprise” pulled off by an Al Qaeda, a resumption of nuclear weapons production processing by Iran, a spike in American deaths in Iraq, or a “new and improved” NIE report by the Bush adminsistration challenges Obama to respond in the midst of a high intensity, competitve general election campaign where the Republicans never play for second place.
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p>Obama is simply untested and unready to be President of the United States in 2008. I am sure he would make a fine Attorney General, however, in the Clinton administration.
The longer Edwards stays in, the better for her. I suspect more of his supporters would jump to Obama than Clinton, no?
Sorry Charley… that is my prediction. And a bunch of frat boy-like talking heads like Chris Matthews are not going to convince me otherwise. BTW, if I am wrong and Barack Obama gets the nomination, I think he will have a really hard time handling the Republican attack machine– and the Democrats will not be in the White House in 2009. That is my other prediction. (FYI, I also supported Deval Patrick… because I thought he was the right person for the job. I have since learned that inspiration only gets you so far.)
…I presume that these were un-bylined editorials. As such, they were not in the name of editors of the Globe. In contrast to op-ed pieces, which are signed by their respective authors, un-bylined editorials are in the name of, and the responsibility of, the publisher.
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p>There is a somewhat significant difference. Check the masthead to determine who the publisher is. One of the Sulzbergers, the owners of the NYTimes Company?
And while publishers DO weigh in or editorial endorsements, they are also made by the editorial board, usually composed of two editors and the political reporter.
…op-ed pieces are signed by the editors, I wrote that they are signed by the authors.
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p>I also did not write that the un-bylined editorials are written by the publisher, I wrote that they are the responsibility of the publisher. There’s a bit of a difference. I’m suffficiently unfamiliar with the internal workings of a newspaper that I would not be able to go into detail, but I would surmise that the publisher is responsible for selecting the editors that are on the editorial board that actually generates the un-bylined editorials. So, in a sense, the publisher actually is responsible, although perhaps indirectly.
If you read both Editorials and boil down the points each cite for endorsing Obama and Hillary, it is an interesting result.Given that their positions on most issues are similar, the publishers/editors had to come up with compelling reasons to choose one over the others.
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p>The Globe wants people to vote for Obama based on his intuition rather than experience relative to foreign affairs and most domestic issues and his broad world view perspective they say is at his core (I’m assuming they mean he has lived in several places during his life.)
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p>The Des Moines register wants people to vote for Clinton because she has a depth of experience and understanding of the major issues confronting the country and the intelligence and political toughness the job of president requires. They flirted with the idea of going with Biden for the same reasons but chose Clinton as the stronger choice for 2008.
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p>I think the Des Moines Register makes the stronger case. Intuition and charisma are great…but we need something more substantial in the White House.
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p>Hoping for change is great but hoping is not enough. We need change from the get-go when the Bushes finally, mercifully leave…we need someone who knows how to move the political chess pieces in DC, no learning curve required. Jimmy Carter (a tremendous human being, but weak president) ran against DC on a platform of hoping for change, was elected and you know the rest.
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p>The Des Moines register makes the stronger case.
That she is unnecessarily defensive and locked in partisan battles from the 1990’s – that her candidacy looks backward rather than to the future.
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p>You also neglect some of the Globe’s reasons for backing Obama – the editorial does speak to Obama’s appreciation for the opportunities facing us and awareness of America’s place in the global community – but it recommends him for much more than this. The editorial lauds Obama’s early opposition to the Iraq war, his past work on ethics reform as an Illinois legislator and his recent work on lobbying reform in the Senate, his views on nuclear nonproliferation and threat reduction, and his forthrightness and independent judgment in general on key domestic issues.
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p>I’m mystified why people would see HRC as likely to be more effective at “moving the political chess pieces” than Obama. HRC is a polarizing figure, highly identified with partisanship. She doesn’t have significant legislation to her credit in her time in the Senate. The huge losses the Democrats suffered in Congress in 1994 stemmed at least in part from her disastrous handling of the health care initiative. Obama’s record is full of interesting examples of working across political constituencies to secure results, including the above-mentioned ethics reforms in Illinois (passed under Republican majority).