Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Endorses Barack Obama

Barack Obama: Democrats deserve a nominee for change

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08107/873625-192.stm

On Tuesday, Pennsylvanians will have the unusual luxury of voting in a Democratic presidential primary that promises to be truly relevant. Like two opposing armies marching to a new Gettysburg, the forces of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton come to this latest battlefield symbolizing two views of America -- one of the past, one of the future. Pennsylvania Democrats need to rise to the historic moment.

For us it is the candidates' vision and character that loom as the decisive factors in this race. For as dissimilar as they are, the two share much in common. It starts with their mold-breaking candidacies. Whoever wins the nomination will vie for a special place in U.S. history -- to be either the first African-American or the first female commander in chief.
•
Although their backgrounds are different, they have come to the same conclusion, one now shared by many Americans, that the Bush administration has taken the nation on a profoundly wrong course both at home and abroad. The excitement that has animated this primary season -- the surge of new voters, the change of party registrations -- is an expression of the nation's hunger for change.

For as hard as they have run against each other, both candidates are united in running vehemently against President Bush and all his works -- another common theme that came out in their visits to the Post-Gazette editorial board on successive days this week. Sen. Clinton was the more explicit in her disdain: George W. Bush "is one of the worst, if not the worst, president we have ever had."

Not surprisingly, the policies they advocate have much in common and are generally the polar opposites of those espoused by the current administration.

On the domestic front, the prescriptions they offer on issues such as health care, the environment and education declare that government must be an agent of change to benefit the lives of ordinary Americans, not a power that shrinks from regulating or directing for fear of offending a core ideology.

In their expansive plans, Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton do have their own emphases and differences -- Sen. Clinton's health-care plan, for example, would cover more Americans than Sen. Obama's, but both would be a vast improvement on the status quo that leaves 47 million Americans uninsured and continues to soar in expense.

On foreign policy, both are united in their desire to bring the troops home from Iraq while improving the strategic situation in Afghanistan, the place of unfinished business where the al-Qaida spiders first spun their deadly web for 9/11 and are coming back thanks to the Iraq diversion.

On Iraq, for those inclined to remember, Sen. Clinton carries more baggage, for she voted to approve the war in the first place. For those inclined to forgive, she would seek to repair relations with allies strained by the Iraq misadventure, as Sen. Obama also would.

There is one last common ground for these candidates: They are both uncommonly smart, thoughtful and very well-versed in the issues. They care about people and they care about the workings of government. They are prepared.

Their strengths promise, in short, the one thing that the Bush administration has so shockingly lacked: competency. There will be no intellectually lazy president in the White House if either succeeded to it, no outsourced thinking to the vice president or the secretary of defense, no cheerfully shallow praise for unqualified political appointments, no enduring cause for embarrassment by the American people.

So forget all the primary skirmishing. Sen. Obama is every bit as prepared to answer the ring of the 3 a.m. phone as Sen. Clinton. Forget this idea that Sen. Obama is all inspiration and no substance. He has detailed positions on the major issues. When the occasion demands it, he can marshal eloquence in the service of making challenging arguments, which he did to great effect in his now-famous speech putting his pastor's remarks in the greater context of race relations in America.

Nor is he any sort of elitist. As he said yesterday in effectively refuting this ridiculous charge in a meeting with Post-Gazette editors, "my life's work has been to get everybody a fair shake."

This editorial began by observing that one candidate is of the past and one of the future. The litany of criticisms heaped on Sen. Obama by the Clinton camp, simultaneously doing the work of the Republicans, is as illustrative as anything of which one is which. These are the cynical responses of the old politics to the new.

Sen. Obama has captured much of the nation's imagination for a reason. He offers real change, a vision of an America that can move past not only racial tensions but also the political partisanship that has so bedeviled it.
•
To be sure, Sen. Clinton carries the aspirations of women in particular, but even in this she is something of a throwback, a woman whose identity and public position are indelibly linked to her husband, her own considerable talents notwithstanding. It does not help that the Clinton brand is seen by many in the country as suspect and shifty, bearing the grimy stamp of political calculation counting as much as principle.

Pennsylvania -- this encrusted, change-averse commonwealth where a state liquor monopoly holds on against all reason and where municipal fiefdoms shrink from sensible consolidation -- needs to take a strong look at the new face and the new hope in this race. Because political business-as-usual is more likely to bring the usual disappointment for the Democrats this fall, the Post-Gazette endorses the nomination of Barack Obama, who has brought an excitement and an electricity to American politics not seen since the days of John F. Kennedy.

First published on April 16, 2008 at 12:00 am

Another Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Columnist Endorsement

Looking toward the future

There are plenty of reasons to vote for Barack Obama -- and against Hillary Clinton

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).)

Six days from today, Pennsylvanians will take up their unexpectedly important obligation to express their opinions on the relative merits of the two Democratic candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. I will be voting for Mr. Obama, for the following reasons:

• He represents the future of America; Mrs. Clinton, the past. Even though some might view the Clintons' previous occupancy of the White House with misty eyes, savoring the absence of the Iraq war and recalling an economy that wasn't tilted toward the oil industry, financial nongeniuses with enormous incomes and the rich in general, that was the 1990s and now is now, eight years later.

• It may seem stuffy to talk about the dignity of the White House, but it is hard to imagine that Americans really would like to see the Clintons' personal lives once again on national display. Whatever reservations one might have about the Bushes, they set a high standard of personal behavior. Michelle and Barack Obama look fine in this area, although they might want to choose their Washington church with care.

• It is fair to look at a candidate's supporters and opponents as a measure of likely behavior in office. In Pennsylvania, Mrs. Clinton has been endorsed by some of the state's harder-core professional politicians.



These include Gov. Ed Rendell, Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and former Pittsburgh Mayor Sophie Masloff. Each of these political figures may have hopes to win some spoils in another Clinton presidency, or debts to pay from a previous one. Mr. Rendell hopes for high national office; Mr. Onorato will want support for his candidacy for governor, and so forth. But they may have made a mistake in jumping so early for Mrs. Clinton, or, driven by ambition, jumping for Mrs. Clinton at all. Instead of betting on the past, they might have thought of staying neutral in the primary, letting the people vote without their advice.


• It is unfortunate, but joining some of Pennsylvania's career politicians in opposing Mr. Obama are those who simply cannot abide the idea of an African American as president of the United States. That is not to say that to support Mrs. Clinton is to be racist. But, for me, if the racists line up on one side of the line, as a matter of principle I will almost certainly find myself on the other side of it. (I did not vote for Lynn Swann for governor, however.) It is Mr. Obama's ability as a leader, not his race, that is the bottom line for me.


• Another reason to vote for Mr. Obama and against Mrs. Clinton is her sometimes shaky relationship with the truth. Maybe I am exceptionally sensitive to that quality after having been lied to systematically by the Bush administration about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and fictional links to al-Qaida, but it seems to me that Mrs. Clinton sometimes does have a problem in this area. I go way back to watching her on television in 1994 dishing up half-truths and untruths about how she had miraculously made $100,000 in profits on commodity transactions in Arkansas.


The latest round was her mis-recalled account of landing in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, under sniper fire, well after the war there had ended. That perhaps unintended whopper stung me particularly because I lived in Tuzla in 2001 and knew some of the people involved there.


• I also want the American people to know who donated and how much to Mr. Clinton's presidential library before the Pennsylvania vote. The Clintons released their tax returns, but not the information about the library. Of course the Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, has still not released even his tax returns.



What delightful shock still awaits us?


• An especially murky area that has prompted me to side with Mr. Obama against Mrs. Clinton is the relationship between her husband's financial arrangements and her candidacy. Labor unions, whose support Mrs. Clinton needs badly, must look closely at how she explains her husband's advocacy on behalf of Colombia as it lobbied for a free-trade agreement with the United States. She has opposed the accord as a senator and as a candidate, based on Colombia's weak record of respect for unionized workers and the risk of losing American jobs. She can't say she didn't know. Mr. Clinton was paid $800,000 for his support of the agreement and the two file a joint tax return. The other obvious question would be how such disagreements between them would be resolved if they were back in the White House together? I don't like to picture it.


The Obamas in the White House would not be troubled by these sorts of money-laden conflicts of interest.

• Finally, there is the intra-Democratic argument about which candidate would run stronger against Mr. McCain in November. There is the reported non-secret, secret strategy attributed to some Republicans of an intention to support Mrs. Clinton as the Democratic candidate because she would be easier for the senior-moment-plagued Mr. McCain to defeat in November than Mr. Obama. Even if I thought it likely that I would support Mr. McCain in November, I would find it difficult to persuade myself that it was a good idea to try to put the lesser of the two Democratic candidates on the ballot against him. Even the most partisan Republicans should favor putting the better of the two Democratic candidates into the general election.

Most important on Tuesday will be to vote. To think it through. To think of America's best interests.

Looking to the future, not betting on the past, I believe, is a course that takes one to the choice of Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton.

First published on April 16, 2008 at 12:00 am