Barack Obama for President

[Roald B. Larsen]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603436_pf.html

Barack Obama for President

Friday, October 17, 2008; A24

THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and
qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have
respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without
ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain's disappointing campaign,
above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to
be president. It is made easy in larger part, though, because of our
admiration for Mr. Obama and the impressive qualities he has shown during
this long race. Yes, we have reservations and concerns, almost inevitably,
given Mr. Obama's relatively brief experience in national politics. But we
also have enormous hopes.

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex
issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we
believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for
markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an
understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence
suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement,
continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf
of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great
president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day
in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle
for very good.

The first question, in fact, might be why either man wants the job. Start
with two ongoing wars, both far from being won; an unstable, nuclear-armed
Pakistan; a resurgent Russia menacing its neighbors; a terrorist-supporting
Iran racing toward nuclear status; a roiling Middle East; a rising China
seeking its place in the world. Stir in the threat of nuclear or biological
terrorism, the burdens of global poverty and disease, and accelerating
climate change. Domestically, wages have stagnated while public education is
failing a generation of urban, mostly minority children. Now add the
possibility of the deepest economic trough since the Great Depression.

Not even his fiercest critics would blame President Bush for all of these
problems, and we are far from being his fiercest critic. But for the past
eight years, his administration, while pursuing some worthy policies
(accountability in education, homeland security, the promotion of freedom
abroad), has also championed some stunningly wrongheaded ones (fiscal
recklessness, torture, utter disregard for the planet's ecological health)
and has acted too often with incompetence, arrogance or both. A McCain
presidency would not equal four more years, but outside of his inner circle,
Mr. McCain would draw on many of the same policymakers who have brought us
to our current state. We believe they have richly earned, and might even
benefit from, some years in the political wilderness.

OF COURSE, Mr. Obama offers a great deal more than being not a Republican.
There are two sets of issues that matter most in judging these candidacies.
The first has to do with restoring and promoting prosperity and sharing its
fruits more evenly in a globalizing era that has suppressed wages and
heightened inequality. Here the choice is not a close call. Mr. McCain has
little interest in economics and no apparent feel for the topic. His
principal proposal, doubling down on the Bush tax cuts, would exacerbate the
fiscal wreckage and the inequality simultaneously. Mr. Obama's economic plan
contains its share of unaffordable promises, but it pushes more in the
direction of fairness and fiscal health. Both men have pledged to tackle
climate change.

Mr. Obama also understands that the most important single counter to
inequality, and the best way to maintain American competitiveness, is
improved education, another subject of only modest interest to Mr. McCain.
Mr. Obama would focus attention on early education and on helping families
so that another generation of poor children doesn't lose out. His budgets
would be less likely to squeeze out important programs such as Head Start
and Pell grants. Though he has been less definitive than we would like, he
supports accountability measures for public schools and providing parents
choices by means of charter schools.

A better health-care system also is crucial to bolstering U.S.
competitiveness and relieving worker insecurity. Mr. McCain is right to
advocate an end to the tax favoritism showed to employer plans. This system
works against lower-income people, and Mr. Obama has disparaged the McCain
proposal in deceptive ways. But Mr. McCain's health plan doesn't do enough
to protect those who cannot afford health insurance. Mr. Obama hopes to
steer the country toward universal coverage by charting a course between
government mandates and individual choice, though we question whether his
plan is affordable or does enough to contain costs.

The next president is apt to have the chance to nominate one or more Supreme
Court justices. Given the court's current precarious balance, we think Obama
appointees could have a positive impact on issues from detention policy and
executive power to privacy protections and civil rights.

Overshadowing all of these policy choices may be the financial crisis and
the recession it is likely to spawn. It is almost impossible to predict what
policies will be called for by January, but certainly the country will want
in its president a combination of nimbleness and steadfastness -- precisely
the qualities Mr. Obama has displayed during the past few weeks. When he
might have been scoring political points against the incumbent, he instead
responsibly urged fellow Democrats in Congress to back Mr. Bush's financial
rescue plan. He has surrounded himself with top-notch, experienced, centrist
economic advisers -- perhaps the best warranty that, unlike some past
presidents of modest experience, Mr. Obama will not ride into town
determined to reinvent every policy wheel. Some have disparaged Mr. Obama as
too cool, but his unflappability over the past few weeks -- indeed, over two
years of campaigning -- strikes us as exactly what Americans might want in
their president at a time of great uncertainty.

ON THE SECOND set of issues, having to do with keeping America safe in a
dangerous world, it is a closer call. Mr. McCain has deep knowledge and a
longstanding commitment to promoting U.S. leadership and values.

But Mr. Obama, as anyone who reads his books can tell, also has a
sophisticated understanding of the world and America's place in it. He, too,
is committed to maintaining U.S. leadership and sticking up for democratic
values, as his recent defense of tiny Georgia makes clear. We hope he would
navigate between the amoral realism of some in his party and the
counterproductive cocksureness of the current administration, especially in
its first term. On most policies, such as the need to go after al-Qaeda,
check Iran's nuclear ambitions and fight HIV/AIDS abroad, he differs little
from Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain. But he promises defter diplomacy and greater
commitment to allies. His team overstates the likelihood that either of
those can produce dramatically better results, but both are certainly worth
trying.

Mr. Obama's greatest deviation from current policy is also our biggest
worry: his insistence on withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a fixed
timeline. Thanks to the surge that Mr. Obama opposed, it may be feasible
to withdraw many troops during his first two years in office. But if it
isn't -- and U.S. generals have warned that the hard-won gains of the past
18 months could be lost by a precipitous withdrawal -- we can only hope and
assume that Mr. Obama would recognize the strategic importance of success
in Iraq and adjust his plans.

We also can only hope that the alarming anti-trade rhetoric we have heard
from Mr. Obama during the campaign would give way to the understanding
of the benefits of trade reflected in his writings. A silver lining of the
financial crisis may be the flexibility it gives Mr. Obama to override some
of the interest groups and members of Congress in his own party who
oppose open trade, as well as to pursue the entitlement reform that he
surely understands is needed.

IT GIVES US no pleasure to oppose Mr. McCain. Over the years, he has been
a force for principle and bipartisanship. He fought to recognize Vietnam,
though some of his fellow ex-POWs vilified him for it. He stood up for
humane immigration reform, though he knew Republican primary voters would
punish him for it. He opposed torture and promoted campaign finance reform,
a cause that Mr. Obama injured when he broke his promise to accept public
financing in the general election campaign. Mr. McCain staked his career on
finding a strategy for success in Iraq when just about everyone else in
Washington was ready to give up. We think that he, too, might make a
pretty good president.

But the stress of a campaign can reveal some essential truths, and the
picture of Mr. McCain that emerged this year is far from reassuring. To pass
his party's tax-cut litmus test, he jettisoned his commitment to balanced
budgets. He hasn't come up with a coherent agenda, and at times he has
seemed rash and impulsive. And we find no way to square his professed
passion for America's national security with his choice of a running mate
who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander
in chief.

ANY PRESIDENTIAL vote is a gamble, and Mr. Obama's résumé is undoubtedly
thin. We had hoped, throughout this long campaign, to see more evidence that
Mr. Obama might stand up to Democratic orthodoxy and end, as he said in his
announcement speech, "our chronic avoidance of tough decisions."

But Mr. Obama's temperament is unlike anything we've seen on the national
stage in many years. He is deliberate but not indecisive; eloquent but a
master of substance and detail; preternaturally confident but eager to hear
opposing points of view. He has inspired millions of voters of diverse ages
and races, no small thing in our often divided and cynical country. We think
he is the right man for a perilous moment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603436.html