"This country needs a president who can restore its vigor at home and revive its image abroad."

Our Opinion: Barack Obama for president

The State-Journal Register | Novemeber 2, 2008

ON SEPT. 12, 2001, the United States received messages of support and condolence from around the globe as this nation struggled to comprehend the previous day’s terrorist attacks. At home, we vowed to set aside our petty differences and unite as Americans.

Today we struggle to comprehend how this nation squandered the near universal good will expressed then. We wonder how the same population that vowed unity then has become so bitterly divided.

The disastrously planned invasion of Iraq earned us the enmity of much of the world and has divided us at home. The war on terror has scarred this country’s human rights record. Three years ago, we and the rest of the world watched helplessly as an inept federal government stumbled while thousands of people struggled to survive Hurricane Katrina’s wrath in New Orleans. Like an exclamation point at the end of the Bush administration, the economy now teeters on the brink of collapse.

We believe this country needs healing internally to end the class and cultural warfare that has reached levels today we never thought we’d see again after 9/11. The United States’ current international image as the world’s bully must be reformed if we hope to effect stability in regions that are now hotbeds of terrorism and nuclear adventurism. Economic recovery, as we see it, is dependent on those goals.

FOR THOSE critical efforts, we believe Barack Obama is the best choice as our next president.

Throughout a grueling primary campaign that began here at the Old State Capitol, Obama went from extreme underdog to the confident, self-assured candidate of the Democratic Party. His poise on the campaign trail since then is no surprise to us. We saw it in person four years ago when he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate and, later, when he met with The State Journal-Register editorial board again after winning his Senate seat. Thoughtful, engaging and intellectually nimble, Obama exuded a sense of quiet self-confidence rare among politicians.

But poise and eloquence alone, as Obama’s detractors have pointed out ad nauseum, don’t make a president, and neither do we rely solely on those qualities in endorsing Obama.

OBAMA'S ADVOCACY of diplomacy in dealing with countries that we now shun, like Iran, is a necessity in our quest to bring “rogue” nations into the global community. We think an Obama administration, which would represent a complete break from Bush policies of the last eight years, would make such diplomacy not only possible, but effective.

We find Obama’s health-care plan, which provides incentives for employers to provide insurance and will make it more difficult for insurance companies to decline coverage based on pre-existing conditions, to be vastly superior to John McCain’s proposed $5,000 tax credit.

While McCain has chided Obama throughout the campaign for opposing last year’s troop surge in Iraq, we side with Obama in noting that the Iraq war began in 2003, not 2007. Clinging to ill-defined notions of “victory” at this stage will only prolong what is already viewed as our occupation of Iraq. An Obama presidency would send a signal to Iraq that it is time to stop relying on America to maintain stability there.

We also think Obama’s personal story — born to a single mother, raised by grandparents, struggling with his own identity — put him in a position to be uniquely empathetic with many Americans of humble means who are now working to emulate his success story.

WE'D BE REMISS if we did not add here that we are profoundly disappointed in the tone McCain’s campaign embraced throughout this race. Hiring the very people who so thoroughly smeared him in South Carolina in 2000 did not serve McCain well. While sounding a call of bipartisan unity, McCain’s actions did otherwise, painting his opponent as an exotic and unknown figure to be feared and mistrusted. His selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was an insult to those who looked to McCain to restore strength and stability to the Republican party.

Those, however, are not the reasons for our endorsement of Obama. This country needs a president who can restore its vigor at home and revive its image abroad. Barack Obama should be that president.