The San Mateo Daily Journal endorsed Barack Obama for president:
This is a historic presidential election, with either the first African-American president or the first female vice president. And with no incumbent president or vice president running for the top of the ticket, this has also been a very heated and sometimes contentious election.
U.S. Sen. John McCain has served his country well and has some good ideas on a number of different issues with which we agree. On taxation and foreign policies, he has clear ideas that will strike heartily with many Americans. Many have different views on the war in Iraq and how and when it should end, but McCain believes in a strong America that will stand up to his foes. McCain’s taxation plan’s popularity depends on who you talk to with many believing spreading the wealth may be best for the country. He would make a fine president.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama has much to learn about foreign policy and taxation but if the recent campaign is any indication, he is a quick learner and surrounds himself with people who understand financial worlds and global political theory. He will likely learn quickly that his game plan of embracing the world will only go so far because there are both powerful and emerging nations that will never like the United States and for which it stands no matter who is in the Oval Office.
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Some endorsements for John McCain:
I can't find the actual editorial, but the Palatka Daily News came out for the Arizona senator.
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The Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise says McCain is a patriot worthy of the presidency:
Obama’s reaction to public exposure of these 20-year relationships has been “I didn’t know.” This wholly unbelievable response prompted one commentator to observe “he’s either the dumbest Columbia and Harvard graduate in history, or the biggest liar, and either disqualifies him for the presidency.”
On the other hand, John McCain is a proven patriot, experienced statesman and respected independent thinker. He is so irrefutably the superior choice, it is troublesome that it even needs to be stated. His love of America has been tested and found not lacking. His courage and determination to stand for American values and ideals are a matter of recorded history. His nonpartisan work in the U. S. Senate has been praised by leadership of both parties.
The world is in turmoil. Global and domestic economies are precarious. John McCain is the only candidate we can trust to make positive change consistent with American values.
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The Tyler Morning Telegraph had a hard time endorsing, but in the end it endorsed McCain:
McCain is right to refute Obama's charge that voting for the GOP slate would be voting for another four years of George W. Bush. McCain is not Bush. Whoever wins, there will be change.
The real question is the kind of change. Frankly, there are few specifics about real, substantial and lasting change in the way Washington works coming from either camp.
And neither candidate is being honest about taxes. Promises of tax cuts ring hollow, in light of the more than $1 trillion pledged to financial sector bailouts. That piper must be paid.
But John McCain has a greater opportunity to govern from the middle than Obama does. McCain has a strong history of bipartisan accomplishments - something that was a weakness during the primary season but should be a strength now.
McCain has shown he can work with the Democratic Party, which will no doubt remain in control of Congress.
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It was a clear choice for the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record:
As our next president may well be granted such an opportunity, it will be of no small consequence to elect someone with a reverence for the Constitution, as written, rather than a desire to affect change through the naming of judges who view our founding document as something to be shredded by personal whimsy and the temptation to legislate rather than interpret. Selecting judges is no small matter.
And so, selecting a president this go-round matters even more, particularly as it seems certain that one political party will retain or even enhance its control of Congress, perhaps to the point of gaining a coveted 60-vote super-majority in the Senate.
Thus, we ask the voter: Is entrusting total domination of the political process to one party in the best interests of this country?
One must consider the extremism such a possibility would invite: Two of the Senate’s most liberal members would assume the presidency and vice-presidency, and the equally liberal leaders of the two branches of a dysfunctional Congress would be elevated to the presidential succession.
Thus, the need for balance, for a leavening presence, is apparent, almost achingly so.
Given what confronts us globally and inside the halls of Congress, America needs strong, seasoned leadership. In what truly is an important election, the choice for president could not be any clearer — John Sidney McCain III.
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Some weeklies endorsed, all for Obama:
The Duke Chronicle likes Obama best:
The next president stands to lead a nation beset. One in the grip of severe economic trouble, whose world position is in doubt, whose political life is too often a distraction and an acid, a cause and an expression of our deep pessimism.
But although America is falling from itself, it is not yet fallen. And so in this election especially, progress has become more than a motto. It is a necessity, our duty to ourselves.
That is why, with full confidence, The Chronicle formally endorses Barack Obama for president.
It gives us no particular relish to oppose John McCain. He is an honorable and accomplished public servant. Before the experience of the campaign re-fashioned him in the image of George W. Bush, McCain was an attractive candidate.
Yet as a choice about character, substance and principle, there is no question that Obama should lead the country.
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The City Newspaper endorsement for Obama, and it's not just because it is a vote against McCain:
Obama is uniquely qualified and uniquely suited to lead this nation. His positions on a wide variety of foreign and domestic-policy issues will move us forward. The next president will face an almost overwhelming number of challenges, but Obama - joined by the kind of cabinet members and other advisers he gives every indication he will appoint - offers the country its the best chance to meet those challenges.
Obama's worldview, thanks in part to his personal background, is what the country desperately needs. He would replace the Bush administration's swaggering unilateralist foreign policy with one that emphasizes diplomacy.
His record as an elected official, according to people who have followed his career closely, is one of surrounding himself with intelligent people, listening, encouraging dissent, deliberating, building consensus. And during the campaign, he has demonstrated that he has a temperament better suited for the presidency than McCain.
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The Windsor Beacon has a brief endorsement of Obama:
While there are 16 different parties on the ballot, we all recognize that his is really about Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. A vote for any of the other candidates would only be ceremonial.
The two have been openly critical of each other’s plans to resolve the economy’s woes. They differ in their approaches to health care, the war in Iraq, and education, just to name a few issues.
While there is merit to many of their suggestions and ideas, they are getting lost in the buzz created by their negative television ads.
Cutting to the chase, we believe this country cannot continue down its current path, a place that a Republican president may continue to take it. The country needs change.
Therefore, we endorse Barack Obama.
This is the entire endorsement.
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Willamette Week finds all kinds of bones to pick with McCain when it endorsed Obama:
We disagree with McCain about a lot. He’s wrong about the path to energy independence. He’s wrong about taxes. He’s been wrong about the war. But his choice of someone with such strange notions and staggering inexperience as Palin is the clearest signal that he is simply unfit for the presidency.
McCain has said the measure of a politician is his willingness to run an honest campaign. Yet McCain’s distortion of Obama’s record and smearing of his character have been a pathetic capstone to a long career in public service.
Of course the notion McCain has "smeared" Obama is a crock of shit. Not one word of objection to Obama's filthy campaign against Hillary Clinton is raised in this editorial. McCain has been very mild by comparison.
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The New York Observer endorsed Obama on October 14:
On the other hand, the next president will be following George W. Bush, whose lack of leadership almost guarantees his successor will be judged a paradigm of informed decisiveness and focus by comparison, no matter which candidate wins.
America in 2008 has a choice between two candidates who may be the most impressive pair of party nominees in 50 years. One of them represents the best of the 20th-century American character; the other embodies the potential greatness of the American future.
We endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States.
John McCain is a good man; he may be a great one. Despite his almost irredeemable choice of running mate, he remains the same rough and ready rebel who snarled and yapped his way off the carpet last winter when he had already been declared D.O.A. and won the Republican nomination, vanquishing the slick and slimy former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who endured Mr. McCain’s bite during the primary debates and limped off the stage to the dark shadows reserved for reformed hypocrites.
Mr. McCain’s self-described straight-talking persona is well earned, his character is legend, his sense of humor intact, his integrity one for the books.
Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, is something else altogether.
The editorial is full of shit regarding the caucuses. They were riddled with fraud on the part of the Obama campaign.
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Earlier this month the San Francisco Bay Guardian endorsed Obama:
But Obama remains one of the most inspirational candidates for high office we've ever seen. He's energized a generation of young voters, he's electrified communities of color, and he's given millions of Americans a chance to hope that Washington can once again be a friend, not an enemy, to progressive values at home and abroad.
His tax proposals are pretty good. He's always been against the war. His health care plan isn't perfect, but it's at least a step toward universal coverage.
And frankly, the nation can't afford another four years of Bush-style policies.
The election is a turning point for the United States. It's about a movement that can change the direction of the country; it's about mobilizing people in large numbers to reject the failed right-wing policies of Bush and the Republican Party. We're pleased to endorse Barack Obama as the standard-bearer of that movement.
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A couple more papers were smart enough not to endorse at all.
The Colorado Springs Gazette didn't endorse, but I can't find anything in the two-week editorial archive.
I can't find anything in the Springfield News-Leader, either.
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