Tahoe Daily Tribune:
Whoever wins the presidential election- Barack Obama or John McCain - will address our nation's most daunting challenge since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Great Depression. Our country is facing the greatest stock-market crash since 1929, a compromised Bill of Rights, fighting two wars and making noise about a third, and has diminished esteem from the rest of the world - which, by the way, is in peril from climate change.
When George W. Bush exits the White House on Jan. 20, let's hope the provincialism leaves as well.
In a time like this, we need a resourceful president who is calm and intelligent, with a penchant for sound judgment and reasoning. And with the entire world watching, he ought to be articulate and even kind, too.
The Tahoe Daily Tribune endorses Barack Obama for president.
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Hutchinson News:
The country can't go too wrong this presidential election.
Mercifully, the end is near for the long and damaging Bush presidency. One of two intelligent, reform-minded men will be elected Nov. 4 at a time when our nation needs not just good but extraordinary leadership.
And that need for brilliant leadership is why Barack Obama is the better of two good candidates. Trying times like these require transformational leaders. Obama is that kind of leader.
Republican John McCain is a great patriot, and his maverick brand has made him a colorful lawmaker in the Senate. He surely would champion campaign finance reform and fight congressional pork barrel spending, both of which definitely are needed. But otherwise his policies are too much like those of the failed Bush administration.
Obama represents a real departure.
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Salem News:
In Obama the Democrats have found a candidate of uncommon smarts and great charisma, someone capable of rousing the country from its present malaise and inspiring it to new heights.
Though choosing a candidate should never be based on race alone, the election of our first African American president would send a strong signal that this is indeed the land of opportunity for all.
What Obama lacks in governmental experience is more than offset by the powerful vision he offers a country that has been buffeted by inadequate responses to natural disasters, is mired in two wars in the Middle East, and now faces a financial catastrophe the likes of which hasn't been seen since the Great Depression.
His ability to rally people to his cause has been much in evidence from the time he won the presidency of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 to this past Sunday when he drew 100,000 people to a campaign rally in Denver. His advocacy for a tax cut for those earning less than $250,000 a year signals an awareness that economic revival requires people having enough money in their pockets to continue spending on goods and services; his support for regulatory reform shows a determination to crack down on the Wall Street excesses that made millionaires of a few but left many without a job or a roof over their heads.
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Joplin Globe:
It’s a theme that both presidential candidates have seized upon during this election cycle — that Americans are ready for a fresh direction at a time of great uncertainty.
The Globe’s editorial board did not take the matter of a presidential endorsement lightly. It was a discussion that spanned several weeks, and the vote was not unanimous. But when it comes to that issue of a new direction, the majority of the board believes that Sen. Barack Obama is the candidate best suited to deliver it.
Following the market collapse and the recent Wall Street bailout, we believe that the nation needs a new economic plan.
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Valley News:
On top of all this is a strange lack of focus. McCain has come to resemble a not-quite-extinct volcano, occasionally sputtering to life to spew some molten rhetoric and then subsiding into a low rumble of political and syntactical incoherence. His erratic performance in the financial crisis consisted of a melodramatic and soon-abandoned call to suspend the campaign until a solution was found, followed by little in the way of substantive prescription on the candidate's part. It was emblematic of a campaign that finds itself short on ideas of how to defend the indefensible record compiled by its own president and party over the past eight years. In short, McCain shows every sign of being yesterday's man.
As to his opponent, voters may ask themselves, who is Barack Obama? That question is not new, but the primary and general election campaigns have gone a long way toward answering it. The senator from Illinois is someone well prepared and well qualified -- by character, judgment, temperament and outlook -- to be president in what promise to be the most challenging times in several generations.
His policy proposals are sound and pragmatic, and they hang together. For instance, on the economy, he proposes to restore stability to the financial markets and protect the public through a program of sorely needed regulation; and to create a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to help reverse the long, slow deterioration of roads and bridges throughout the United States, as well as to create jobs.
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Home News Tribune:
On other issues, they differ widely, and Obama has the better positions on taxes, on health insurance, and on the use of diplomacy rather than arrogance as a tool for addressing problems around the world and restoring the nation's moral standing. Obama opposed the war in Iraq from the start and seems more committed to ending American military presence there so as to deploy it against terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
This is not to say that Obama has no flaws. The country is waiting, for instance, for him to explain why he pledged to use public funds to conduct his presidential campaign, and then went back on his word and spent far more than any candidate before him.
Nor has he given a coherent answer as to which parts of his ambitious program will have to be put off — as some certainly will — in the face of a serious economic downturn.
But still, he is the stronger candidate.
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Bucyrus Telegraph Forum:
The 47-year-old U.S. Senator from Illinois has demonstrated a willingness and ability to do all of these things.
As a candidate, Obama has built a broad base of supporters; an inclusive group that crosses lines of race, gender, income and other essential constituents.
We don't know if one single political leader has all the answers. We see things to like and dislike in plans put forward by Obama and his opponent, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona.
We remain a nation divided in too many ways, a condition that has worsened during the past eight year.
We believe Obama offers the best opportunity to begin crossing these demographic and political fault lines, working for consensus and in communicating new directions and ideas to a nation badly in need of leadership.
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