Why Obama gets our vote
A candidate who is right for America
February 1, 2008
On June 5, 1986, the curiously poetic name of Barack Obama appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times for the first time. Obama, new to us but presenting himself as a "community organizer" on the South Side, was quoted in a news story calling on Mayor Harold Washington to get asbestos out of a public housing project.
Obama was right about that one -- the poisonous asbestos had to go -- and perhaps we should have weighed in at the time with a strong editorial. It is the job of a newspaper -- especially this newspaper -- to stand with the powerless against the powerful.
And so today, as we mark the 60th birthday of our newspaper, it is a special pleasure to give Obama this newspaper's endorsement in Tuesday's Illinois Democratic presidential primary. Because we believe he's right again.
Obama is right on the issues, right in daring us to believe in a goodness greater than ourselves, and right in having the confidence to appeal to all of us as one America.
Obama has the power of a celebrity's charisma and the grounding of a common man's birth.
There's been talk of Camelot in the last few days. Back then, that young president said to us:
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
And once, we had another great leader, who said, "I have a dream."
Americans took them at their word. They joined the Peace Corps. They marched on Selma. They protested a pointless war.
We need a president and a leader like that again.
Remember, in 1960, voters chose John F. Kennedy, whose own vision was sketchy yet promising, whose political track record was largely as a senator. The country still mourns that unrealized dream of Camelot.
Significantly, the Kennedy family can see the promise that is Obama:
"I want a president who . . . appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved," said Caroline Kennedy, JFK's 50-year-old daughter.
Call us shameless idealists, but that sounds right on to us.
Obama has been open with us about his flaws -- his youthful drug use, an appetite for danger, insecurities about his absent father. Yet all that seems to play in his favor, to make him a little more like a regular American.
With Obama, though, we are offered the stirrings of possibility, the nearness of greatness. Talk to young people and hear their voices quake with anticipation -- dare we say hope -- that Obama will deliver on the campaign rhetoric about changing the way Washington works. Yes, he's still relatively new to Washington, but that also means he has not accumulated many political debts. He can step on toes to get things done.
The Harvard-educated, street-trained Obama has largely been accepted on his own merit -- his race, rightly, relegated to near afterthought. His biracial heritage is a bonus for a generation that has grown up in integrated schools and fawning over black celebrities and athletes.
Should we elect a man because of how he makes us feel? Of course not. Obama has substance, too.
Obama was right about the asbestos back in 1986. Much later, on the bigger stage, he was right about the Iraq war. He has a workable plan to get our troops out of Iraq without a disastrous retreat, and he's the only candidate who consistently opposed the war. Unlike, we are embarrassed to say, this newspaper.
Before a shot was fired, Obama told a Chicago audience:
"I don't oppose all wars . . . what I am opposed to is a dumb war."
That's not weakness. That's not Obama being soft -- he has also suggested he'd bomb Pakistan if he thought it would kill America's terrorist enemies.
We like the thinking he has put into extending universal health care to the uninsured by working through existing insurance companies. It's a scheme rooted in the doable, not the ideological.
We like that this man of faith believes in something bigger than himself. He told the Sun-Times that he believes all people -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists -- know the same God.
"I am a Christian," he told us. "I have a deep faith. I believe that there are many paths to the same place."
He speaks powerfully of his faith and manages not to alienate nonbelievers. This man can get both votes.
Quite some trick.
Obama's worldview is shaped by his multicultural upbringing. He was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a white mother from a Protestant family and a black father from Kenya. He grew up in Indonesia. This global heritage can go a long way toward repairing our image abroad, particularly in dealing with Islamic terrorism and national safety.
America would instantly gain credibility on the global stage, and that's huge. Even a right-wing thinker like Andrew Sullivan put it this way:
"It's November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man -- Barack Hussein Obama -- is the new face of America. In one simple image, America's soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm . . . a brown-skinned man whose father was an African . . . who attended a majority-Muslim school, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama's face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can."
But Obama is American through his bone marrow, and only this wonderfully multicultural free land could even produce such a man.
And here's where Obama is at his finest: In the soaring inspiration of his words.
Let cynics say his words are empty. Let them swim in the glowering mean-spiritedness of talk radio and the intellectually shameful spin games that pass for serious political discourse on cable news.
Let President Bush continue to falsely link the Iraq war with al-Qaida -- as he did again Monday in his final State of the Union address.
Let Hillary Clinton insist, as she did in last week's debate, that Obama was praising President Ronald Reagan's conservative policies when she knows perfectly well he was speaking of Reagan's political skills.
We expect little better from Bush these days. We do expect more from Sen. Clinton and her husband, Bill. We know politics is a blood sport for this overachieving couple, and the racial rhetoric and negative campaign tactics they've employed bear this out.
Even those of us who liked the idea of a woman in the White House, even if only because it's time, are now demystified about Clinton. Her attempt to cast Obama as the so-called "black candidate" was crude and evoked racial stereotypes we have all grown tired of. Hillary Clinton's reliance on negative campaigning speaks more of her willingness to stick to the old ways of the Establishment and less of her capacity to foment change.
We make this endorsement with our eyes wide open. Obama has limited experience in big-time government. He has never run a business, never met a payroll. Privately, he can be occasionally snippy (he didn't like being asked about his pedicures), and publicly he can be secretive (he refused to divulge all facts and figures on fund-raisers).
Especially troubling is what we don't know about Obama's relationship with indicted Chicago developer Tony Rezko, currently in jail awaiting trial. This newspaper revealed that story, and we will continue to demand a full accounting.
So, yes, this newspaper is endorsing a man because of how he makes us feel, the hope he evokes within us, the patriotism that he inspires in us and, most important, his ability to unite Americans, no matter their color, gender or social background.
Obama is more than an motivational speaker. He represents to us, more than anything, a break from orthodoxy, a break from the Bush- Clinton legacy that is 20 years in the making. Yes, he is a symbol of truth, possibility and that overused word -- change.
