Newspaper Endorsements: Obama

For the second time in its history, the Chicago Tribune endorses a Democrat for president.

The first time it did so was in 2008, for Obama, of course.

I'd argue the Tribune is merely keeping with tradition, as Obama isn't a Democrat anyway but a faker who is actually a Reagan Republican.

The other Chicago paper, the Sun-Times, no longer endorses presidential candidates.

We have hammered the White House repeatedly for its failure to forge some path to a less indebted American citizenry. Yes, Republicans were obstructionists in Obama’s second two years. But before that Obama had two years with a Democratic Congress and he chose to focus on Obamacare, a program whose wisdom we have questioned and whose cost estimates have swiftly grown.

And Mitt Romney? He projects himself as a sure-handed chief executive, a proven leader who solves problems. He has, though, been astonishingly willing to bend his views to the politics of the moment: on abortion, on immigration, on gun laws and, most famously, on health care.

As a governor, his signature issue was the deal he cut with Democrats to extend health care -- and a health insurance mandate -- to all citizens. Romneycare was the Massachusetts model on which key elements of Obamacare were modeled. Yet Romney won’t acknowledge he is, in effect, the godfather of the national health care plan he vows to repeal.

His proposals to achieve a balanced budget, and to begin reducing taxpayers’ huge debts, rest on questionable math and rosy assumptions.

There's not a dime's worth of difference between the two of them on matters of substance.
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Montgomery Advertiser:

We Americans are notorious for our short political memories, for not always acknowledging that considerable progress has been made even though times are still difficult for many of us. Given the truly awful state of the economy four years ago and the geopolitical strains created in large part by unwise foreign policy decisions by the previous president, it is fair to say that few presidents have entered the Oval Office with as daunting a set of challenges as those that faced Barack Obama.

And it is also fair to say, although his critics will never admit it, that much progress has been made in addressing those challenges and that recovery proceeds, albeit at a slower pace than the president and the rest of us would like to see. The profoundly mistaken military venture in Iraq that his predecessor began has been ended, and an end is in sight to the military effort in Afghanistan.

A president can’t do everything. Neither the human capacity nor the constitutional authority exists for that. But a president can – indeed must – exercise sound and decisive leadership when the very foundations of a nation’s economy are imperiled. President Obama did that and an economy that was spiraling downward stabilized and began to recover.