Face of Change Belongs to Obama

The economy teeters. The country is waging two foreign wars. A third conflict - the "war" on terror - tests whether the nation will keep its soul.

A health care morass threatens pocketbooks and lives. Whether a U.S. Supreme Court tilt becomes more pronounced hangs in the balance. Problems abound for any incoming president, including regaining U.S. stature abroad.

The Bush administration has bumbled from crisis to crisis for nearly eight years, competence gone AWOL. The nation needs resuscitating change like a new baby needs that first breath of air.

Two would-be successors pledge it. But Barack Obama is more believable. We recommend him to be the 44th president of the United States.

Obama's vision and potential to be that change agent trump his relative lack of experience, though the experience he possesses is valuable. The maturity and calm demeanor he has exhibited these past two years in the public spotlight and earlier, speak to able, careful, inclusive leadership. And he is simply the better of the two on the issues.

Who is the real Obama? That's the seed of fear that opponent John McCain has sown, as if these last years of electioneering haven't overturned every rock and opened every closet. The question does not occur in a vacuum. Karl Rove disciples in the McCain camp are well aware of the vicious viral campaign against Obama that seeks to tag him as the ugly "other." The seed they've tried to plant is intended for soil fertilized by our worst instincts.

But we think we know who the real Obama is. And, in us, this elicits high hopes and expectations.

He's the candidate who, throughout this campaign, mostly has acquitted himself with calm eloquence and pragmatic responses, energizing thousands who might not otherwise participate in the electoral process.

He's the candidate who recognizes that McCain's solution to health care (mostly tax credits and taxing health benefits), is no Rx for runaway health care costs and a vast army of uninsured Americans.

Obama instead proposes universal coverage through a mix of private and expanded public insurance that the experts say would put a far larger dent in the number of uninsured than would McCain's plan.

Obama is the candidate who recognized early the folly of invading Iraq and, earlier than McCain, spoke out because Afghanistan was spinning out of control.

McCain, an early supporter of the invasion, was later a critic of how the war was being waged, supporting a surge that Obama opposed. But McCain now fails to recognize that Americans want something different than his open-ended approach. How long can the U.S. continue to spend $10 billion a month, and how long should American lives be lost there?

Yes, it is a more dangerous world these days. But our confidence goes to the candidate, Obama, whose steadiness has marked his campaign and who more highly values the power of diplomacy, face-to-face, with enemies.

Both candidates have staked out credible plans to deal with energy and climate change, but Obama has the more ambitious agenda.

On the economy, both candidates backed the $700 billion bailout package, but Obama's economic focus, more than McCain's, seems to skew more to helping middle- and lower-income folks.

This focus is necessary.

McCain is more of a free trader than is Obama, who unfortunately has argued for reopening the North American Free Trade Agreement. A bad idea. Nonetheless, we, too, want elements of fair trade in any agreement.

McCain's personal story is compelling — Navy pilot, POW in Vietnam who chose captivity rather than dishonor, House member and then U.S. senator from Arizona with a reputation for being a maverick.

Obama's story is no less compelling — Kenyan father, raised by a single white mother and his Kansan grandparents, Harvard-educated lawyer, community organizer who chose service to others over a New York lawyer's salary, constitutional law lecturer, state senator, U.S. senator and the first African-American to be named as a presidential nominee for a major U.S. party.

Today, McCain's maverick image stands badly tarnished. In the 2004 election, they called what McCain has done in this election flip-flopping. Today, we don't know which McCain the country would be getting as president, the maverick of 2000 or the panderer of 2008.

Is he the one who rejected President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy or the one who now embraces them? The one who sponsored comprehensive immigration reform or the one who says he wouldn't vote for that bill today? The one who experienced torture as a POW and pushed back against a president who would allow it or the candidate who voted against interrogations done humanely by the book?

And he also has squandered his claim to one of his supposed assets — his experience, as a military man and member of Congress for 26 years. Simply, he has displayed deplorable judgment in key instances that call into question the value of his overall judgment.

In Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 72-year-old candidate with a history of melanoma picked a woefully unqualified running mate — as she continues to prove day after day. And both he and she have conducted a campaign that has careened from inept to offensive.

In Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, Obama picked a vice president with foreign policy credentials to serve in the event of tragedy, not just a running mate to score political points.

The non-issue of William Ayers has become a centerpiece of McCain's campaign while Palin talks as if the only real Americans live in red-state small towns (something she was forced to apologize for) and falsely smears Obama for "palling around with terrorists."

Obama's campaign has not been above misleading voters — on McCain's stances on Social Security and immigration, for instance. But on this matter of unseemly campaigning, McCain's — starting with the Paris Hilton/Britney Spears ad — is clearly over the top.

Will either candidate be able to afford what he proposes? No. But in their plans, we see their inclinations, and Obama's are better. We are so weary of all this rhetoric about government as Public Enemy No. 1 — until there's a private sector to bail out — and how "spreading the wealth" denotes some sinister socialist agenda.

McCain's political career has been marked by selective instances of bucking partisanship — on campaign finance reform law that bears his name and on comprehensive immigration reform. But these last years also have been consistently marked by political hand-holding with Bush.

It is Obama, in his first term as a U.S. senator, who offers the freshest face of change. He, more than McCain, offers the best chance for instilling in Americans a new sense of unity and purpose and restoring the image abroad of an America as worthy as its ideals.

Obama for President.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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