The Boston Globe Endorses McCain

The Boston Globe endorses John McCain:

Conventional wisdom among political handlers used to hold that a candidate needed to capture the political center. The last two presidential campaigns proved that wrong. The 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 is a conservative whose views differ from those of this editorial page in a variety of ways. He opposes abortion rights. At least in the current election cycle, he has shown no particular quarrel with his party's knee-jerk view of tax cuts as the cure to the nation's economic problems.

Also unlike this page, McCain has strongly supported the current war in Iraq, including the troop surge. Yet the Arizona senator has never been an uncritical booster of President Bush's policies. Early on, he accurately predicted that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wasn't sending enough troops to maintain order after Saddam Hussein fell. Today, he straightforwardly acknowledges the fragility of the Iraqi government and the corruption that pervades that country. He understands that US failures in Iraq, along with President Bush's torpid response to Hurricane Katrina, have damaged the nation's credibility abroad and at home.

McCain's honesty has served him well on other issues. As a longtime public official from a border state, he recognizes that illegal immigration is a complex problem - for which better border control is only part of the solution. His thoughtful stance may be a tough sell politically at a time when many Republicans (and many Democrats) are anxious about the number of people living and working in the United States illegally. But his opponents' get-tough poses are unlikely to close the gap between immigration law and immigration practice; McCain's comprehensive approach is far more likely to bring the two back in line.

One of McCain's great virtues is his willingness to acknowledge unpleasant realities. McCain sees that special interests with money to throw around have an undue influence over the electoral process and public policy, that the planet is getting warmer because of human activities, that interrogating a suspect by pretending to drown him is a form of torture. To the consternation of many of his fellow Republicans, McCain has pushed for serious reform legislation in all three areas.

In 2000, McCain's insurgent candidacy almost succeeded in stopping the George W. Bush juggernaut. This time around, McCain is running further back in the pack of candidates. Yet Republican voters in New Hampshire would be wise to consider this: Of all the party's candidates, McCain has the greatest potential appeal to independent voters.

The Arizona senator is running for president at a treacherous time. Iraq is in flames. The economy is weak. American voters are worried about their futures, and about their government's ability to enforce its own laws. A general election campaign with John McCain in it is more likely to turn on substance, not demagoguery.

As a lawmaker and as a candidate, McCain 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.

The Boston Globe Endorses Obama

The Boston Globe endorses Barack Obama:

The first American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must. 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. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois 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.

What is more extraordinary is how Obama seals each of these experiences to his politics. One of the lessons he took from organizing poor families in Chicago, he says, was "how much people felt locked out of their government," even at the local level. That experience anchors his commitment to transparency and accountability in Washington.

Similarly, his exposure to foreign lands as a child and his own complex racial identity have made him at ease with diversity - of point of view as well as race or religion. "I've had to negotiate through different cultures my whole life," he says. He speaks with clarity and directness, and he is also a listener, a lost art in our politics.

In what looks like prescience today, Obama was against the Iraq war from the start. But his is not the stereotypical 1960s antiwar reflex. "I don't oppose all wars," he said in the fall of 2002. "I'm opposed to rash wars."

When it comes to waging peace, Obama has the leadership skills to reset the country's reputation in the world. He notes, for example, that the United States would be in a stronger position with Iran if it took more seriously its own commitment to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. His bill, cosponsored with Senator Richard Lugar, to add conventional weapons to the nation's threat reduction initiative, became law this year.

On domestic issues, the major Democratic candidates are reduced to parsing slivers of difference. But Obama has been more forthright in declaring his slightly heterodox positions to traditional Democratic constituencies. His support for merit pay for teachers, or a cap on carbon emissions, suggests a healthy independence from the established order.

The first major bill to Obama's name in the Illinois Legislature was on campaign ethics reform. In Washington, he coauthored this year's sweeping congressional lobbying reform law. When he describes his approach to healthcare negotiations, he says, "The insurance and drug companies will get a seat at the table, but they won't get to buy every chair."

Obama's critics, and even many who want to support him, worry about his relative lack of experience. It is true that 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 animated by its possibilities.

In our view, the choice on the Democratic side is between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton has run a diligent, serious campaign, and her command of the issues is deep and reassuring. But her approach is needlessly defensive, a backward glance at the bruising political battles of the 1990s. Obama's candidacy looks forward.

Obama's memoir, "Dreams From My Father," is divided into three main sections. The first is a reflection on his youthful search for identity. The second recounts his days in Chicago, which include the first stirrings of a religious life. The third is a roots pilgrimage to Kenya, to better understand his often absent father. It is hard to read this book without longing for a president with this level of introspection, honesty, and maturity - and Obama published it when he was only 33.

"I genuinely believe that our security and prosperity are going to depend on how we manage our continued integration into the rest of the world," he says. Obama's story is the American story, a deeply affecting tale of possibility. People who vote for him vote their hopes. Even after seven desolating years, this country has not forgotten how to hope.

John Edwards Returns To Pace University

At CBS4 in New York city, Kelly Marshall writes:

Sen. John Edwards entered Pace University auditorium Friday afternoon to loud applause, the pop, pop of camera flashbulbs and possibly a sense of déjà vu.

In September 2003, Edwards took the school stage in one of the Democratic debates in the last campaign. This time he had the stage all to himself.

Pace University sits at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge and is just a few blocks from the World Trade Center. The sixth anniversary of 9/11 is just days away and it's a tough anniversary for some.

Edwards was introduced Friday by Kristin Breitweiser, whose husband, Ron worked in the World Trade Center and was killed on 9/11. After she lost her husband, Breitweiser and four other 9/11 widows formed the "Jersey Girls" and successfully lobbied Congress to form an investigative commission to look into the attacks. This blonde-haired single-mother calls Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, friends and is supporting Edwards on the campaign trail for a second time. In 2004, Breitweiser said Edwards -- who wound up as John Kerry's vice presidential runningmate --was the only candidate offering solutions to the country's current problems.

Edwards spoke to an audience full of supporters and media, but not a large number of students. But Edwards reached out to young people just the same. Touching on the war in Iraq, his views on foreign policy, and oil dependency, Edwards said he was willing to sacrifice for America and asked that they do the same. It is "these sacrifices from you and other Americans that will restore this country's greatness," he said.

To enthusiastic applause, Edwards said that it was, "time to be patriotic about something other than war." He also challenged the students in the audience to, "hold yourself accountable for creating a better nation. That is what it means to be American."

Edwards left the stage to a standing ovation. Breitweiser said she thought Edwards gave a great speech and that his ideas for changing the way America fights terrorism and improving foreign relations would provide a safer future for everybody.