Endorsement: Peoria Journal Star endorses Barack Obama for President
This newspaper's pick for president of the United States represents the most difficult call in our memory. It might even be said that we agonized over it.
Ultimately, we came to this conclusion: In the race for the White House between Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois and Republican John McCain of Arizona, there is no limited government candidate for this era of undisciplined and damaging spending excess.
As a result, we must look at other qualities and issue positions before declaring our preference for the next occupant of the Oval Office.
First, traditionally the less-government-is-best responsibility has fallen to Republicans. But the last eight years of a Republican in the White House - six of them with the GOP also running the show in Congress - have had Americans watch a budget surplus of $237 billion in 2000 become a record budget deficit of $455 billion in 2008. That could grow to a previously unimaginable $1 trillion next year. By the time George W. Bush leaves office, he will have presided over the doubling of the national debt, to more than $11 trillion.
The 21st century so far also has seen the largest entitlement expansion since LBJ with the prescription drug benefit under Medicare, continued subsidies even for farmers who have prospered, mega-business bailouts and the partial nationalization of banks. The word "socialist" has been tossed around a lot by Republicans in assailing the Democrat in this contest; while Obama has brought some of that upon himself through past comments, the GOP ought to look in the mirror.
As should the 72-year-old McCain, who has promised not a reversal but a continuation of the policies that have helped bring us to this point. Witness his proposal to buy up $300 billion worth of bad mortgages. It certainly blunts McCain's argument that he'd be the safest bet for taxpayers.
To be sure, McCain would make the Bush tax cuts permanent across the board, while the 47-year-old Obama would hike marginal tax rates for the two top income brackets, returning them to Clinton-era levels. If McCain's tax policies are more oriented toward the wealthy and a belief in trickle-down economics, Obama is focused on helping a middle class whose wages have stagnated, with a faith in trickle-up.
Many analysts say McCain's plan, which includes further tax breaks on corporate profits, is the better one for economic growth and job creation. Certainly you can argue that government ought not raise anyone's taxes in a recession. Certainly you can say that Obama is redistributing the wealth, though all taxation is wealth redistribution. In any case, even the most conservative of those analysts - the Heritage Foundation, for example - concede that McCain's proposals run up significantly more red ink than Obama's, nearly double by any estimate. We're talking trillions. You can pay me now, or you can pay me later ... with interest.
"Neither one of them is being fiscally responsible," said David M. Walker, former director of the Government Accountability Office.
Another big issue is health care. Obama would expand Medicaid and children's health coverage (SCHIP) and require large and mid-size companies to either provide health insurance to employees or pay into a pool to subsidize America's uninsured, now numbering 47 million. Under the McCain plan, Americans would for the first time be taxed on the health care benefits their employers provide, but in return they'd get a tax credit - $2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for families - to do with as they please. It's a net tax cut for most. Again, neither candidate really says how he'd pay for all this.
We do have reservations about the Big Brother strong-arming of the private sector in Obama's plan. McCain's costs a lot, but isn't likely to whittle the number of uninsured, not in a nation where the average health care plan is priced at about $12,000 annually (and that's if you don't have a pre-existing condition). Arguably taxpayers get socked for those 47 million uninsured, who too often get their primary care treatment in emergency rooms, whether government gets involved or not. Checked your premiums and deductibles lately? There is a moral component to this issue, too, in a nation where the phrase "compassionate conservatism" has all but disappeared from the political vocabulary.
On foreign policy, Obama cannot match McCain's credentials in what remains a dangerous world. A President Obama likely would bring American troops home from a stabilized Iraq faster than a President McCain would, though at a cost of $10 billion-plus a month, both candidates might move up their deadlines. Obama has set his sights on Afghanistan-Pakistan, while McCain talks more of Iran.
We don't think Obama is the risk here some accuse him of being; at the very least, he'll have former Secretary of State and Gen. Colin Powell to advise him. Either candidate will have the formidable challenge of repairing America's tattered image across the globe.
On energy policy, a subject of vital long-term importance that has received too little attention, McCain is "drill, baby, drill," while Obama would direct significant resources toward alternative and renewable fuels, with a goal of being independent of Mideast oil within a decade. At some point, this nation must get serious about breaking the "addiction to oil" that Bush talked about with so little action.
Finally, there is that critical intangible: Leadership.
Part of the problem here is that we don't know which John McCain we're getting, the "maverick" who stood on principle prior to 2008, even when it bucked his party, or the candidate who's spent the last year flip-flopping all over the place - not just slightly, but doing 180s on Bush's tax cuts, immigration, energy policy.
The last two weeks of September were McCain's worst of the campaign. With some big financial institutions collapsing and Wall Street in free-fall, he said the economy was fine on Monday, then not so fine on Tuesday. On Tuesday he opposed the taxpayer bailout of insurance behemoth AIG; on Wednesday he'd changed his mind. One day he was a deregulator, the next day he wanted to punish "the greedy and corrupt" on Wall Street with more regulation. He tried to delay the debates.
McCain seemed erratic, discombobulated, unsure. You need consistency and predictability in a leader. Sometimes you need a calm and confident hand.
Exuding a sense of calm and confidence doesn't seem a problem for Obama, who nonetheless has less of a record on the leadership score. While he's done a few reversals himself - most notably on accepting campaign spending limits - on the whole what you see and hear from him is what you get: He's an unapologetic liberal who believes government has the capacity to do good in people's lives. Certainly Obama has built an impressive campaign organization. Certainly he's shown the ability to inspire with his oratory. Effective presidents understand the power of the bully pulpit.
One element of leadership is whom you surround yourself with, where you get your advice. If McCain has had former Sen. Phil Gramm for economic know-how, Obama has Warren Buffett. If Obama chose long-time senator Joe Biden to be his running mate, McCain chose Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. From where we sit, McCain put politics first, nation second with that decision.
One of McCain's best selling points is that he would be the only brake against a runaway Democratic Congress. It's a fair concern, and we, too, prefer divided government, though it's worth mentioning that Republicans didn't come close to accomplishing everything they wanted with complete control of the federal government - no Social Security reform, no energy policy - any more than Democrats have with state government in Springfield.
Ultimately, we are electing a man, not a messiah. There are limits on any one president's ability to effect massive change, for better or worse. Checks and balances are built into the system. Intruding realities - recession and huge deficits while fighting a two-front war - will likely force a McCain or Obama administration to scale back their spending plans.
Worst-case scenario with McCain? He's another four years of George W. Bush. Worst-case scenario with Obama? He takes the nation too far to the left and in two years Americans have a chance to give control of Congress to a reconstituted, reformed, returned-to-its-roots Republican Party - think 1994 - that has learned something from its two years in the wilderness. Americans would have a real choice again.
This nation will survive, perhaps even begin to flourish again, no matter which man assumes the helm.
We know something of Obama. It seems to catch some by surprise to learn he's been to this office a number of times, as a candidate, as Illinois' junior senator. What we've learned from those visits, and from his performance since, is that he would bring an intellectual depth to the White House that has been missing for a while. We do not see the bogeyman some fear will turn the tables on life as we know it in America. For the most part he's taken the high road in this campaign, passing on the politics of fear and division that can make it so difficult to govern after the polls close. Fixing complex and seemingly overwhelming problems requires bipartisan cooperation. Parochially, it never hurts to have a guy from Illinois in the White House.
John McCain is a good man who has done much to be proud of over a quarter century of public service. As we said, this was the closest of calls.
But on balance, after the longest of campaigns, Barack Obama has our endorsement for the presidency of the United States.
Peoria Journal Star