Following up on my enblogment of Kerry four years ago, and with a tip of the hat to Lawrence Lessig, I am thrilled to endorse Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I voted last night (gotta love Oregon vote by mail!).

The single best thing you can read for reasons why I endorse Obama is The New Yorker’s endorsement. But in case you’re not an elitist liberal like me, perhaps the endorsement of one of these other fine sources might help to sway you:

• The Washington Post
• The Los Angeles Times
• The New York Daily News
• The Miami Herald
• The San Francisco Chronicle
• Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
• The Philadelphia Inquirer
• The Chicago Sun-Times
• The Chicago Tribune
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
• The Denver Post

Personally, I believe that Barack Obama has the steady hand and unflappable personality to be able with withstand the worst that the next four years will throw at him. And, should he win, there will be a lot of shit to deal with, from accusations of stealing the election to confrontations with belligerent foreign heads of state. In the debates he was cool and composed, completely unfazed by McCain’s bellicosity, and that composure will serve him extremely well as President, both in his role in the bully pulpit and in dealing with attacks from within and without. I don’t agree with him on every detail of his policies, and I expect to, in some ways, be disappointed. But I’ll take disagreement and disappointment over the sheer abhorrence of the last eight years any time.

As for McCain, well, I was never a supporter, never even interested in him as a candidate. He was kind of interesting to people I respected in 2000, but that’s about the best I can say about him. What I find bizarre is the two reactions to the McCain campaign that seem to be coming from McCain apologists in the punditry and the press. On the one hand, there are those who think that McCain is in some kind of bubble, unaware of how nasty his own campaign has become. On the other hand, there are those who think that McCain knows exactly what he’s doing with the direction of the campaign. All I can say is, regardless of which of these is true (or some combination therein), is this really the sort of person you want to lead the United States of America? Someone who is either so out of touch that he has no idea what his staff is up to, or who is so obsessed with his immediate goals that he’s willing to drag his entire operation to the most debased of levels? Neither represents leadership qualities. All I can say is, “No thanks.”

Barack Obama for President. He’s the right man for the job at the right time.

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• Part I
• Part II
• Part III

(Via Ian Kallen)

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Following Lawrence Lessig’s lead, I am pleased to endorse John Kerry for President of the United States of America. In fact, like most Oregonians, I’ve already voted by mail. Have you?<

I could say a lot of things about why I support Kerry. But what it really all comes down to is how incredibly well-qualified he is for the job. Looking back over the last few presidents, I think that he is perhaps the best qualified since Richard Nixon–and he comes without all of Nixon’s problems. Ultimately, however, I couldn’t make the argument better than it has already been made, ad nauseam. So I’ll just point to the endorsements that make the case so powerfully that I feel that little more needs be said.

• The New Yorker
• The New York Times
• Lawrence Lessig

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My father-in-law, Steven, sent me this link to a Newsweek column by Howard Fineman. Like Steven, I thought it very interesting that a conservative columnist would be basically saying that the election is all but over for Bush, given the past week’s news. But the funny thing is, I didn’t know that Fineman was conservative until I read that column. What gave it away?

It was this snippet:

On one level, Kerry’s “position” is a contradictory bundle of confusion. He says the war was a mistake, but he’s the guy calling for a gung-ho strategy in Fallujah to root out terrorist nests. As the president has pointed out, Kerry is claiming he can win the support of allies even as he dismisses the contributions of existing ones and calls the entire war a diversion–and even as France and Germany already have said that they aren’t going to rally to our side if Kerry wins. But if the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, Kerry’s “vision”–or lack of it–matters less.

This seems typical of conservative commentary–it’s a very selective description of Kerry’s position. Yes, Kerry says that the war was a mistake, but now that we’re in it, we need to do it right, including getting tough on rooting out the terrorists (who, by the way, only came into the country after the war started). Kerry has not dismissed the contributions of existing allies, but has pointed out that, unlike Desert Storm, this coalition is far from evenly divided. As Edwards repeatedly said during the Veep debate, the US bears 90% of the cost among the coalition members, both in terms of dollars and in terms of lives. There is no contradiction in these statements. The contradiction only comes up if they’re used selectively and outside of appropriate contexts.

I am so sick of this hypocrisy! I keep telling people, I can’t wait to be disappointed in Kerry’s presidency, as I was with Clinton’s. I’ll take disappointment over being offended by the President and his apologists any day!

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HOLY SHIT!

According to a story in Salon.com, it appears that George W. Bush may well have been wearing a radio transmitter during the first debate. This would be so that he could get prompts from someone more knowledgeable (Dick Cheney?).

Current Electoral Vote Predictor (which currently shows Kerry leading 280 to 239!) has confirmed the presence of “the bulge” with this image, using Red Hawk image intensification software.

My favorite phrase from the Salon.com article: the “Milli Vanilli president.”

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Julie and I just got back from the Kerry rally at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland, OR. According to the Kerry Blog, there were ca. 60,000 people at the rally. Julie and I waited till the last minute to go, and for a while there thought we wouldn’t get in. But we did, and heard the second half of Kerry’s speech. As we made our way through the city afterward, we overheard some other folks saying they’d arrived at 8:30 and never got in. We felt very fortunate. I think it was just dumb luck to have found the entrance we did.

We were pretty close to the stage, too. We were off to the right out of the frame of this picture, but still only 30m or so from the stage. We could see Kerry quite clearly from there. It was interesting to see him in person; he was quite lively in addressing the crowd, and clearly engaged in what he was doing. He seemed to be having a good time, too. But I couldn’t help wondering if he and the other speakers didn’t occasionally feel silly up there, making the same speech with the same gestures over and over. Especially at the end, when Kerry shakes his fist in the air like a champion boxer and points out various groups of people for him and Teresa to wave to. But then again, maybe I’m just too jaded myself.

Still, it was interesting to be there in person and to see him working in person. It gave me much more of the impression that we’re dealing with a real person here, rather than just a talking head like you might see on TV. Here’s a guy who might soon hold what is arguably the most powerful political office in the world, and really, he’s just a regular guy trying to do some good, out there talking to anyone who will listen about how he wants to make things different than they have been. He’s a guy you could talk to, and talk to about the issues.

I got this impression from a rally with 60,000 people? Yeah, maybe I’m just nuts.

Highlight of the speech (what we heard of it) for Julie and me: Kerry’s plan to invest much more in alternative energy, to make America energy independent by 2020. That’s a plan I can very much get behind! I also appreciated his saying that he would never send US troops into action unless there was no alternative. The Iraq war is such a clusterfuck in so many ways; I really hope that things will change when Kerry is sworn into office.

But even if they don’t change that much, or not for a while, I would love to be able to have complaints about the Presidential administration more like I had about the Clinton White House. I’d rather be worried that my President was too close to the middle and conciliatory than that he was so far to the right as to be, well, radical.

I will do my part to see to it that Kerry gets the chance to disappoint me as a highly preferable alternative to the current state of complete mortification.

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