Hyperbole is the currency of
presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the
balance.The United
States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed
leadership. He is saddling his successor with two wars, a scarred global
image and a government systematically stripped of its ability to protect and
help its citizens — whether they are fleeing a hurricane’s floodwaters,
searching for affordable health care or struggling to hold on to their
homes, jobs, savings and pensions in the midst of a financial crisis that
was foretold and preventable.
As tough as the times are, the
selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling
and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved he is
the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.
Mr. Obama has met challenge
after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early
promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We
believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political
consensus essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.
McCain's choice of a running mate so
evidently unfit for the offic
e
was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the
accomplishments of 26 years
in Congress.
Indeed, the presidential campaign
has rendered McCain nearly
unrecognizable. His selection of
Sarah Palin as his running mate was
irresponsible, as Palin is the most
unqualified vice presidential
nominee of a major party in living
memory. The decision calls into
question just what kind of thinking
— if that's the appropriate word —
would drive the White House in a
McCain presidency. Fortunately, the
public has shown more discernment,
and the early enthusiasm for Palin
has given way to national ridicule
of her candidacy and McCain's
judgment.
Obama's selection also was telling.
He might have scored a steeper bump
in the polls by making a more
dramatic choice than the capable and
experienced Joe Biden. But for all
the excitement of his own candidacy,
Obama has offered more competence
than drama.
Given the particularly ugly
nature of Mr. McCain’s campaign, the urge to choose on the basis of raw
emotion is strong. But there is a greater value in looking closely at the
facts of life in America today and at the prescriptions the candidates
offer. The differences are profound.
Mr. McCain offers more of the
Republican every-man-for-himself ideology, now lying in shards on Wall
Street and in Americans’ bank accounts. Mr. Obama has another vision of
government’s role and responsibilities.
In his convention speech in
Denver, Mr. Obama said, “Government cannot solve all our problems, but what
it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm
and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our
toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and
technology.”
Since the financial crisis, he
has correctly identified the abject failure of government regulation that
has brought the markets to the brink of collapse.
Mr. Obama is a man of supple
intelligence, with a nuanced grasp
of complex issues and evident skill
at conciliation and
consensus-building. At home, he would respond to the
economic crisis with a healthy
respect for markets tempered by
justified dismay over rising
inequality and an understanding of
the need for focused regulation.
Abroad, the best evidence suggests
he would seek to maintain U.S.
leadership and engagement, continue
the fight against terrorists, and
wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of
U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama
has the potential to become a great
president.
Mr. Obama also understands the
most important single counter to
inequality, and the best way to
maintain American competitiveness,
is improved education, another
subject of only modest interest to
Mr. McCain. Mr. Obama would focus
attention on early education and on
helping families so another
generation of poor children doesn't
lose out. His budgets would be less
likely to squeeze out important
programs such as Head Start and Pell
grants. Though he has been less
definitive than we would like, he
supports accountability measures for
public schools and providing parents
choices by means of charter schools.
But Mr. Obama, as anyone who reads
his books can tell, also has a
sophisticated understanding of the
world and America's place in it. He,
too, is committed to maintaining
U.S. leadership and sticking up for
democratic values, as his recent
defense of tiny Georgia makes clear.
We hope he would navigate between
the amoral realism of some in his
party and the counterproductive
cocksureness of the current
administration, especially in its
first term. On most policies, such
as the need to go after al-Qaeda,
check Iran's nuclear ambitions and
fight HIV/AIDS abroad, he differs
little from Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain.
But he promises defter diplomacy and
greater commitment to allies. His
team overstates the likelihood that
either of those can produce
dramatically better results, but
both are certainly worth trying.
But the stress of a campaign can
reveal some essential truths, and
the picture of Mr. McCain that
emerged this year is far from
reassuring. To pass his party's
tax-cut litmus test, he jettisoned
his commitment to balanced budgets.
He hasn't come up with a coherent
agenda, and at times he has seemed
rash and impulsive. And we find no
way to square his professed passion
for America's national security with
his choice of a running mate who, no
matter what her other strengths, is
not prepared to be commander in
chief.
But Mr. Obama's temperament is
unlike anything we've seen on the
national stage in many years. He is
deliberate but not indecisive;
eloquent but a master of substance
and detail; preternaturally
confident but eager to hear opposing
points of view. He has inspired
millions of voters of diverse ages
and races, no small thing in our
often divided and cynical country.
Hispanic News thinks Barack Obama is the right man for a
perilous time. A man for all
seasons.
Barack Obama
is the competent, confident
leader who represents the
aspirations of the nation.
It is inherent in the American
character to aspire to
greatness, so it can be
disorienting when the nation
stumbles or loses confidence in
bedrock principles or
institutions.
That's where the
United States is as it prepares
to select a new president: We
have seen the government take a
stake in venerable private
financial houses; we have
witnessed eight years of
executive branch power grabs and
erosion of civil liberties; we
are still recovering from a
murderous attack by terrorists
on our own soil and still
struggling with how best to
prevent a recurrence.
We need a leader who
demonstrates thoughtful calm and
grace under pressure, one not
prone to volatile gesture or
capricious pronouncement. We
need a leader well-grounded in
the intellectual and legal
foundations of American freedom.
Yet we ask that the same person
also possess the spark and
passion to inspire the best
within us: creativity,
generosity and a fierce defense
of justice and liberty.
Our nation has never before had a
candidate like Obama, a man born in
the 1960s, of black African and
white heritage, raised and educated
abroad as well as in the United
States, and bringing with him a
personal narrative that encompasses
much of the American story but that,
until now, has been reflected in
little of its elected leadership.
The excitement of Obama's early
campaign was amplified by that
newness. But as the presidential
race draws to its conclusion, it is
Obama's character and temperament
that come to the fore. It is his
steadiness. His maturity.
These are qualities American
leadership has sorely lacked for
close to a decade. The Constitution,
more than two centuries old, now
offers the world one of its more
mature and certainly most stable
governments, but our political
culture is still struggling to shake
off a brash and unseemly
adolescence. In George W. Bush, the
executive branch turned its back on
an adult role in the nation and the
world and retreated into
self-absorbed unilateralism.
Obama is no lone rider. He is a
consensus-builder, a leader. As a
constitutional scholar, he has
articulated a respect for the rule
of law and the limited power of the
executive that make him the best
hope of restoring balance and
process to the Justice Department.
He is a Democrat, leaning further
left than right, and that should be
reflected in his nominees to the
U.S. Supreme Court. This is a good
thing; the court operates best when
it is ideologically balanced. With
its present alignment at seven
justices named by Republicans and
two by Democrats, it is due for a
tug from the left.
Obama inspires
confidence not so much in his grasp
of Wall Street finance but in his
acknowledgment of and comfort with
his lack of expertise. He will not
be one to forge far-reaching
economic policy without sounding out
the best thinkers and practitioners,
and he has many at his disposal. He
has won the backing of some on Wall
Street not because he's one of them
but because they recognize his
talent for extracting from a broad
range of proposals a coherent and
workable program.
We may one day look back on this
presidential campaign in wonder. We
may marvel that Obama's critics
called him an elitist, as if an Ivy
League education were a source of
embarrassment, and belittled his
eloquence, as if a gift with words
were suddenly a defect. In fact,
Obama is educated and eloquent,
sober and exciting, steady and
mature. He represents the nation as
it is, and as it aspires to be.
The Economy
The American financial system
is the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies.
Those ideas have been proved wrong at an unfathomable price, but Mr. McCain
— a self-proclaimed “foot soldier in the Reagan revolution” — is still a
believer.
Mr. Obama sees that
far-reaching reforms will be needed to protect Americans and American
business.
Mr. McCain talks about reform
a lot, but his vision is pinched. His answer to any economic question is to
eliminate pork-barrel spending — about $18 billion in a $3 trillion budget —
cut taxes and wait for unfettered markets to solve the problem.
Mr. Obama is clear that the
nation’s tax structure must be changed to make it fairer. That means the
well-off Americans who have benefited disproportionately from Mr. Bush’s tax
cuts will have to pay some more. Working Americans, who have seen their
standard of living fall and their children’s options narrow, will benefit.
Mr. Obama wants to raise the minimum wage and tie it to inflation, restore a
climate in which workers are able to organize unions if they wish and expand
educational opportunities.
Mr. McCain, who once opposed
President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy as fiscally irresponsible, now
wants to make them permanent. And while he talks about keeping taxes low for
everyone, his proposed cuts would overwhelmingly benefit the top 1 percent
of Americans while digging the country into a deeper fiscal hole.
National
Security
The American military — its
people and equipment — is dangerously overstretched. Mr. Bush has neglected
the necessary war in Afghanistan, which now threatens to spiral into defeat.
The unnecessary and staggeringly costly war in Iraq must be ended as quickly
and responsibly as possible.
While Iraq’s leaders insist on
a swift drawdown of American troops and a deadline for the end of the
occupation, Mr. McCain is still taking about some ill-defined “victory.” As
a result, he has offered no real plan for extracting American troops and
limiting any further damage to Iraq and its neighbors.
Mr. Obama was an early and
thoughtful opponent of the war in Iraq, and he has presented a military and
diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces. Mr. Obama also has
correctly warned that until the Pentagon starts pulling troops out of Iraq,
there will not be enough troops to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan.
Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, has
only belatedly focused on Afghanistan’s dangerous unraveling and the threat
that neighboring Pakistan may quickly follow.
Mr. Obama would have a
learning curve on foreign affairs, but he has already showed sounder
judgment than his opponent on these critical issues. His choice of Senator
Joseph Biden — who has deep foreign-policy expertise — as his running mate
is another sign of that sound judgment. Mr. McCain’s long interest in
foreign policy and the many dangers this country now faces make his choice
of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska more irresponsible.
Both presidential candidates
talk about strengthening alliances in Europe and Asia, including NATO, and
strongly support Israel. Both candidates talk about repairing America’s
image in the world. But it seems clear to us that Mr. Obama is far more
likely to do that — and not just because the first black president would
present a new American face to the world.
Mr. Obama wants to reform the
United Nations, while Mr. McCain wants to create a new entity, the League of
Democracies — a move that would incite even fiercer anti-American furies
around the world.
Unfortunately, Mr. McCain,
like Mr. Bush, sees the world as divided into friends (like Georgia) and
adversaries (like Russia). He proposed kicking Russia out of the Group of 8
industrialized nations even before the invasion of Georgia. We have no
sympathy for Moscow’s bullying, but we also have no desire to replay the
cold war. The United States must find a way to constrain the Russians’ worst
impulses, while preserving the ability to work with them on arms control and
other vital initiatives.
Both candidates talk tough on
terrorism, and neither has ruled out military action to end Iran’s nuclear
weapons program. But Mr. Obama has called for a serious effort to try to
wean Tehran from its nuclear ambitions with more credible diplomatic
overtures and tougher sanctions. Mr. McCain’s willingness to joke about
bombing Iran was frightening.
The
Constitution and the Rule of Law
Under Mr. Bush and Vice
President Dick Cheney, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the justice
system and the separation of powers have come under relentless attack. Mr.
Bush chose to exploit the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, the moment in which he
looked like the president of a unified nation, to try to place himself above
the law.
Mr. Bush has arrogated the
power to imprison men without charges and browbeat Congress into granting an
unfettered authority to spy on Americans. He has created untold numbers of
“black” programs, including secret prisons and outsourced torture. The
president has issued hundreds, if not thousands, of secret orders. We fear
it will take years of forensic research to discover how many basic rights
have been violated.
But Mr. Obama has gone beyond
that, promising to identify and correct Mr. Bush’s attacks on the democratic
system. Mr. McCain has been silent on the subject.
Mr. McCain improved
protections for detainees. But then he helped the White House push through
the appalling Military Commissions Act of 2006, which denied detainees the
right to a hearing in a real court and put Washington in conflict with the
Geneva Conventions, greatly increasing the risk to American troops.
The next president will have
the chance to appoint one or more justices to a Supreme Court that is on the
brink of being dominated by a radical right wing. Mr. Obama may appoint less
liberal judges than some of his followers might like, but Mr. McCain is
certain to pick rigid ideologues. He has said he would never appoint a judge
who believes in women’s reproductive rights.
The
Candidates
It will be an enormous
challenge just to get the nation back to where it was before Mr. Bush, to
begin to mend its image in the world and to restore its self-confidence and
its self-respect. Doing all of that, and leading America forward, will
require strength of will, character and intellect, sober judgment and a
cool, steady hand.
Mr. Obama has those qualities
in abundance. Watching him being tested in the campaign has long since
erased the reservations that led us to endorse Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton in the Democratic primaries. He has drawn in legions of new voters
with powerful messages of hope and possibility and calls for shared
sacrifice and social responsibility.
Mr. McCain, whom we chose as
the best Republican nominee in the primaries, has spent the last coins of
his reputation for principle and sound judgment to placate the limitless
demands and narrow vision of the far-right wing. His righteous fury at being
driven out of the 2000 primaries on a racist tide aimed at his adopted
daughter has been replaced by a zealous embrace of those same
win-at-all-costs tactics and tacticians.
He surrendered his standing as
an independent thinker in his rush to embrace Mr. Bush’s misbegotten tax
policies and to abandon his leadership position on climate change and
immigration reform.
Mr. McCain could have seized
the high ground on energy and the environment. Earlier in his career, he
offered the first plausible bill to control America’s emissions of
greenhouse gases. Now his positions are a caricature of that record: think
Ms. Palin leading chants of “drill, baby, drill.”
Mr. Obama has endorsed some
offshore drilling, but as part of a comprehensive strategy including big
investments in new, clean technologies.
Mr. Obama has withstood some
of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been
called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The
Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s
love of her country. Ms. Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’
patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states “pro-America.”
This politics of fear,
division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from
the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has
been the dominant theme of his failed presidency.
The nation’s problems are
simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads.
This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest
leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of
those qualities.
Why Hispanic Catholics can in Good
Conscience back Barack Obama
This
is a rebuttal to a
published essay by George Weigel arguing Barack Obama's
views on abortion are fundamentally
at odds with Catholic doctrine. This election rightly continues to
focus on the millions of Americans
at risk of losing their jobs and
their homes. The issue of abortion,
of course, is tied to the nation's
economic fortunes. In part, we
endorsed Senator Obama because his
tax-reduction plan focuses on the
betterment of average families and
those living at the margins. Center
for Disease Control statistics
reveal prosperity directly
affects the abortion rate far more
significantly than Republican
rhetoric pledging to outlaw abortion
— a feat John McCain has failed to
accomplish with nearly three decades
in Congress.
In the last days of this
election, abortion is among the
crucial issues for Catholic voters,
but promoting a culture of life is
necessarily interconnected with a
family wage, universal health care
and, yes, better parenting and
education of our youth. This greater
appreciation for the totality of
Catholic teaching is at the very
heart of the Obama campaign; it is
scarcely a McCain footnote.
In a perfect world, the pro-life
argumentation of George Weigel is
unassailable. He counsels having
constitutional law align absolutely
with the defense of innocent human
life; to which we say, "Amen." The
problem for Weigel is even our
collective "Amen" will not make it
so. In the meantime, millions of
children are being aborted.
Mr. Weigel is an intellectual and
for him it's a simple matter of
accessing the objective truth of the
human person as explicated in
Catholic natural law and saying,
"Follow me." For 35 years, however,
pro-lifers have followed that
intellectual siren call, asking the
Supreme Court on multiple occasions
to reverse Roe v. Wade.
The church asks its faithful to
find meaningful — not hypothetical —
ways to promote human life. While
getting the law and philosophy right
might eventually do that, it does
bring up the question: What are you
doing for the cause of life now? The
McCain answer: not much.
Besides being prepared to
nominate justices like Samuel Alito
and John Roberts, who in keeping
with their judicial oath are
certainly not on record as having a
predetermined view on the reversal
of Roe, McCain's planning
has all the narrow, in-built
affluent bias of the near-identical
Bush ideas. In terms of health care,
McCain makes no provision for the
uninsured and proposes the
insured pay more, in all likelihood
dumping people into a private
insurance market that is more
expensive and less responsive to
those with pre-existing conditions.
By contrast, Obama does make
provision for universal health care
and recognizes abortion for what it
is: a tragic moral choice often
confronted by a woman in adverse
economic and social circumstances: without spouse, without steady
income, without employment
prospects, and a particularly
stigmatic and cumbersome adoption
procedure. Obama proposes to reduce
the incidence of abortion by helping
pregnant women overcome the ill
effects of poverty that block a
choice of life.
We're happy to continue to debate
abortion, but the well-worn
battlefield Mr. Weigel occupies
should not distract voters from
tangible policies that would
actually reduce abortions. Before
unwarranted Republican indenture,
Catholic thinking gave proportionate
consideration to how well a
candidate addressed such important
matters as a just economy, a living
or family wage, access to health
care, stewardship of the
environment, fair treatment of
immigrants and, not to be
overlooked, the just or unjust
conduct of a war. This is basic
Catholic social teaching. It also
just happens to be Barack Obama's
policy agenda.
Is Obama the perfect pro-life
candidate? No. Is he preferable to
the self-proclaimed "pro-lifer"
McCain? Yes, because promoting life
in actuality beats McCain's label
and all of Weigel's elegant
theorizing and hand-wringing. The
Republican alternative familiar to
Weigel is simultaneously
self-righteous, easy and
ineffective. The Democratic path is
practical, anything but easy — as no
act of bona fide love of neighbor
ever is — but inviting of a
life-affirming outcome.
Weigel may also wish to stay tied
up in knots over the fitness of
Catholic politicians to receive holy
communion, rather than practically
asking how to be of help to a woman
facing an unwanted pregnancy. But as
we read the American bishops, they
have invited Catholic officeholders
to promote life as much as is
politically possible never
conceding any life as expendable.
The notion of using the sacrament as
a political tool we find divisive,
deeply offensive and contrary to the
Gospel.
Weigel may also wish to engage in
a theoretical debate about
hypothetical public support for the
funding of abortion, and whether
that results in improper moral
complicity with an evil act. That is
a worthy seminar topic, but we
recommend he start by asking the
same question of himself in terms of
coerced taxpayer support for an
unjust and unjustifiable war in Iraq
costing over $10 billion a month and
thousands of Iraqi and American
lives, which Weigel aided and
abetted with his vocal support,
contrary to the express prayers of
the Holy Father he called "a witness
to hope."
There is no more audacious
embrace of hope than faith-based
action that honors all of life.
Racism
Senator John
McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of
American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare
and racism. The most revealing act of racism is the non action to condemn
the antics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of arresting undocumented in Phoenix,
Arizona rather than arresting convicted felons with outstanding warrants.
The silence of McCain shreds and
condones campaign rhetoric to be "President of all the people" made in New
Orleans at the beginning of the campaign. Of all places in the United States, if
John McCain silently supports Arpaio in McCain's home town
—
this then reveals a monumental
glimpse of the real McCain whose policies and worldview are mired in the
past.
This monumental glimpse of racism is further exposed and compounded by a few
Phoenix Hispanics who blindly endorse McCain. In a written statement, Bettina
Nava,
McCain's southwest
regional campaign manager, says
McCain has always
had strong support from
Hispanics in
Arizona.
At the 2008 Republican National Convention, Tommy Espinoza quoted the Gospel
of Matthew: Chapter 25: verse 35, "I was a stranger and you made me welcome."
Espinoza added, "When John McCain says, 'Immigrants are also God's children'
... I know his suffering .. has given him compassion for the weak, broken
families, and the poor."
If Nava and Espinoza have truth on their side,
then why have McCain
,
Nava and Espinoza been silent in condemning the racists actions of Maricopa
County (Phoenix) sheriff Joe Arpaio duplicating the racism of
Eugene "Bull"
Conner the Police
Commissioner of
Birmington, Alabama in attacking peaceful non-violent black protesters with
dogs and fire-hose.
The silence of McCain, Nava and
Espinoza condones the racism of Joe Arpaio and shreds the rhetoric used by
McCain, Nava and Espinoza. This rhetoric is no different than that of the French
Vichy government actively collaborating with the German Nazi Gestapo in the
extermination of European Jews. The same type of Nazi Gestapo racism today
imprisons people with brown faces every day in Phoenix, Arizona. There can be no
justification for Nava and Espinoza other than they must be living in a cave and
certainly their silence betrays Phoenix Hispanics. As for McCain's silence,
McCain has been running for President for 26 years and he is not going to do
anything to alienate the conservative white Republican voter. The most classic
example of this was when McCain skipped out a side door of the U.S. Senate so he
would not have to cast a vote for the Dream Act that American Hispanics strongly
support and conservative white Republican voters such as Lou Dobbs do not.
Jon Garrido
Jon@JonGarrido.com
Some content from Internet news
services
Footnote: The loss of John McCain to Barack Obama will make John McCain
vulnerable in 2010 when John McCain is up for re-election. The search has
already begun to find an American Hispanic to unseat McCain.
