Sometimes, I really wish I didn’t have to turn to the foreign media to get the best news from an unbiased and objective perspective. The Economist has long been one of those foreign sources of news to which I have turned to get a broader perspective of world events.

The Economist generally has a center-right leaning … it is a British magazine concerned with world events and the economy, after all … and yet, like so many other media outlets, it is giving its endorsement to Barack Obama.

If there is anyone out there reading this blog that is still undecided about whom to vote for, please read this article … for once, I’ve quoted the entire article, rather than just an excerpt. Hopefully The Economist won’t come after me for copyright violation.

Read the article, and then go vote. Cast your ballot for whomever you think will better lead the United States over the next four years. I feel that man will be Barack Obama, which is how I cast my ballot in early voting. Even if you vote for the other guy, please make sure you get out today, brave the lines and the weather and exercise your right, your privilege … and as far as I’m concerned, your duty to vote.

Just vote.

An endorsement of Barack Obama | It’s time | The Economist
Oct 30th 2008 - From The Economist print edition
America should take a chance and make Barack Obama the next leader of the free world

IT IS impossible to forecast how important any presidency will be. Back in 2000 America stood tall as the undisputed superpower, at peace with a generally admiring world. The main argument was over what to do with the federal government’s huge budget surplus. Nobody foresaw the seismic events of the next eight years. When Americans go to the polls next week the mood will be very different. The United States is unhappy, divided and foundering both at home and abroad. Its self-belief and values are under attack.

For all the shortcomings of the campaign, both John McCain and Barack Obama offer hope of national redemption. Now America has to choose between them. The Economist does not have a vote, but if it did, it would cast it for Mr Obama. We do so wholeheartedly: the Democratic candidate has clearly shown that he offers the better chance of restoring America’s self-confidence. But we acknowledge it is a gamble. Given Mr Obama’s inexperience, the lack of clarity about some of his beliefs and the prospect of a stridently Democratic Congress, voting for him is a risk. Yet it is one America should take, given the steep road ahead.

Thinking about 2009 and 2017

The immediate focus, which has dominated the campaign, looks daunting enough: repairing America’s economy and its international reputation. The financial crisis is far from finished. The United States is at the start of a painful recession. Some form of further fiscal stimulus is needed (see article), though estimates of the budget deficit next year already spiral above $1 trillion. Some 50m Americans have negligible health-care cover. Abroad, even though troops are dying in two countries, the cack-handed way in which George Bush has prosecuted his war on terror has left America less feared by its enemies and less admired by its friends than it once was.

Yet there are also longer-term challenges, worth stressing if only because they have been so ignored on the campaign. Jump forward to 2017, when the next president will hope to relinquish office. A combination of demography and the rising costs of America’s huge entitlement programmes—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—will be starting to bankrupt the country (see article). Abroad a greater task is already evident: welding the new emerging powers to the West. That is not just a matter of handling the rise of India and China, drawing them into global efforts, such as curbs on climate change; it means reselling economic and political freedom to a world that too quickly associates American capitalism with Lehman Brothers and American justice with Guantánamo Bay. This will take patience, fortitude, salesmanship and strategy.

At the beginning of this election year, there were strong arguments against putting another Republican in the White House. A spell in opposition seemed apt punishment for the incompetence, cronyism and extremism of the Bush presidency. Conservative America also needs to recover its vim. Somehow Ronald Reagan’s party of western individualism and limited government has ended up not just increasing the size of the state but turning it into a tool of southern-fried moralism.

The selection of Mr McCain as the Republicans’ candidate was a powerful reason to reconsider. Mr McCain has his faults: he is an instinctive politician, quick to judge and with a sharp temper. And his age has long been a concern (how many global companies in distress would bring in a new 72-year-old boss?). Yet he has bravely taken unpopular positions—for free trade, immigration reform, the surge in Iraq, tackling climate change and campaign-finance reform. A western Republican in the Reagan mould, he has a long record of working with both Democrats and America’s allies.

If only the real John McCain had been running

That, however, was Senator McCain; the Candidate McCain of the past six months has too often seemed the victim of political sorcery, his good features magically inverted, his bad ones exaggerated. The fiscal conservative who once tackled Mr Bush over his unaffordable tax cuts now proposes not just to keep the cuts, but to deepen them. The man who denounced the religious right as “agents of intolerance” now embraces theocratic culture warriors. The campaigner against ethanol subsidies (who had a better record on global warming than most Democrats) came out in favour of a petrol-tax holiday. It has not all disappeared: his support for free trade has never wavered. Yet rather than heading towards the centre after he won the nomination, Mr McCain moved to the right.

Meanwhile his temperament, always perhaps his weak spot, has been found wanting. Sometimes the seat-of-the-pants method still works: his gut reaction over Georgia—to warn Russia off immediately—was the right one. Yet on the great issue of the campaign, the financial crisis, he has seemed all at sea, emitting panic and indecision. Mr McCain has never been particularly interested in economics, but, unlike Mr Obama, he has made little effort to catch up or to bring in good advisers (Doug Holtz-Eakin being the impressive exception).

The choice of Sarah Palin epitomised the sloppiness. It is not just that she is an unconvincing stand-in, nor even that she seems to have been chosen partly for her views on divisive social issues, notably abortion. Mr McCain made his most important appointment having met her just twice.

Ironically, given that he first won over so many independents by speaking his mind, the case for Mr McCain comes down to a piece of artifice: vote for him on the assumption that he does not believe a word of what he has been saying. Once he reaches the White House, runs this argument, he will put Mrs Palin back in her box, throw away his unrealistic tax plan and begin negotiations with the Democratic Congress. That is plausible; but it is a long way from the convincing case that Mr McCain could have made. Had he become president in 2000 instead of Mr Bush, the world might have had fewer problems. But this time it is beset by problems, and Mr McCain has not proved that he knows how to deal with them.

Is Mr Obama any better? Most of the hoopla about him has been about what he is, rather than what he would do. His identity is not as irrelevant as it sounds. Merely by becoming president, he would dispel many of the myths built up about America: it would be far harder for the spreaders of hate in the Islamic world to denounce the Great Satan if it were led by a black man whose middle name is Hussein; and far harder for autocrats around the world to claim that American democracy is a sham. America’s allies would rally to him: the global electoral college on our website shows a landslide in his favour. At home he would salve, if not close, the ugly racial wound left by America’s history and lessen the tendency of American blacks to blame all their problems on racism.

So Mr Obama’s star quality will be useful to him as president. But that alone is not enough to earn him the job. Charisma will not fix Medicare nor deal with Iran. Can he govern well? Two doubts present themselves: his lack of executive experience; and the suspicion that he is too far to the left.

There is no getting around the fact that Mr Obama’s résumé is thin for the world’s biggest job. But the exceptionally assured way in which he has run his campaign is a considerable comfort. It is not just that he has more than held his own against Mr McCain in the debates. A man who started with no money and few supporters has out-thought, out-organised and out-fought the two mightiest machines in American politics—the Clintons and the conservative right.

Political fire, far from rattling Mr Obama, seems to bring out the best in him: the furore about his (admittedly ghastly) preacher prompted one of the most thoughtful speeches of the campaign. On the financial crisis his performance has been as assured as Mr McCain’s has been febrile. He seems a quick learner and has built up an impressive team of advisers, drawing in seasoned hands like Paul Volcker, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Of course, Mr Obama will make mistakes; but this is a man who listens, learns and manages well.

It is hard too nowadays to depict him as soft when it comes to dealing with America’s enemies. Part of Mr Obama’s original appeal to the Democratic left was his keenness to get American troops out of Iraq; but since the primaries he has moved to the centre, pragmatically saying the troops will leave only when the conditions are right. His determination to focus American power on Afghanistan, Pakistan and proliferation was prescient. He is keener to talk to Iran than Mr McCain is— but that makes sense, providing certain conditions are met.

Our main doubts about Mr Obama have to do with the damage a muddle-headed Democratic Congress might try to do to the economy. Despite the protectionist rhetoric that still sometimes seeps into his speeches, Mr Obama would not sponsor a China-bashing bill. But what happens if one appears out of Congress? Worryingly, he has a poor record of defying his party’s baronies, especially the unions. His advisers insist that Mr Obama is too clever to usher in a new age of over-regulation, that he will stop such nonsense getting out of Congress, that he is a political chameleon who would move to the centre in Washington. But the risk remains that on economic matters the centre that Mr Obama moves to would be that of his party, not that of the country as a whole.

He has earned it

So Mr Obama in that respect is a gamble. But the same goes for Mr McCain on at least as many counts, not least the possibility of President Palin. And this cannot be another election where the choice is based merely on fear. In terms of painting a brighter future for America and the world, Mr Obama has produced the more compelling and detailed portrait. He has campaigned with more style, intelligence and discipline than his opponent. Whether he can fulfil his immense potential remains to be seen. But Mr Obama deserves the presidency.

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

From KeatingEconomics.com:

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal — the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating’s failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain’s judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.

Okay, so that’s the Obama story … now, what are the facts?

The Facts: Keating was sentenced to prison and required to pay more than $1 billion in civil penalties after being convicted on fraud, racketeering and conspiracy charges centered around his running of Lincoln Savings and Loan, which he bought in 1984. On April 14, 1989, Lincoln was seized by the government at an eventual taxpayer cost of $3.4 billion, then the most expensive thrift bailout in history. Lincoln and Keating became national symbols of the savings-and-loans collapse of the ’80s — much as lending firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have symbolized the current financial meltdown.

McCain had been friends with Keating since the early ’80s — their families vacationed together several times, according to previous CNN reporting. Keating was an early financial supporter of McCain’s political career and donated to his campaigns repeatedly over the years. Keating’s first company, American Continental, was headquartered in Arizona, the state McCain represents. McCain became one of the so-called “Keating Five” — five U.S. senators investigated over accusations they tried to interfere in a federal investigation of Keating’s role in the savings-and-loan’s collapse.

In January 1985, while in the U.S. House, McCain co-sponsored a resolution that would have delayed the effective date of proposed government limits “on direct investment in real estate, service corporations, and equity securities by federally insured savings and loan associations.” He was one of the early sponsors, although a majority of Congress eventually signed on to sponsor it. The legislation would have impacted Keating’s business, but would have regulated the entire industry, not specifically Lincoln Savings and Loan.

McCain also wrote several letters to government regulators and other officials regarding the issue. One, dated Jan. 30, 1985, to White House chief of staff James Baker, called the proposed regulations “unwise,” saying the effort “flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise.”

On April 9, 1987, McCain and the other senators attended a meeting with federal regulators investigating Keating. McCain has since said he regrets doing so. “He asked me to help him,” he said during an October 2002 interview with Chicago’s WGN-AM radio station. “I said I wouldn’t do certain things. He called me a wimp. I threw him out of my office, but I still went to a meeting with four other senators with a group of regulators.”

McCain testified that he never asked for anything inappropriate during the meeting, and the Senate ethics committee found that, after regulators said the firm was being investigated not just for insolvency, but on criminal grounds, McCain took no further action on Keating’s behalf. In the end, the committee recommended McCain and Sen. John Glenn be dropped from the probe — although McCain was rebuked by the Senate for using “poor judgment” in his relationship with the millionaire banker.

The Verdict: True. McCain did push to delay regulations that would have cracked down on savings-and-loans practices and intervened on Keating’s behalf, although he was cleared of wrongdoing in the “Keating Five” case.

Why should we believe that John McCain’s judgment is any better now, than it was 20 years ago?

Terrific article on Economist.com this week analysing how Hillary Clinton’s campaign fell apart …

The Economist is a British newsmag, with a moderate lean to the right … but their articles are incredibly insightful and researched, and presented more objectively than any American media outlet.

The post-mortem | The fall of the House of Clinton | Economist.com

THIS time last year it looked as if Hillary Clinton’s path to the Democratic nomination would be a cakewalk. She had the best brand-name in American politics. She controlled the Democratic establishment. She had money to burn and a double-digit lead in the opinion polls. And as the first American woman to have a chance of breaking the presidential glass ceiling, she had a great story to tell.

And Barack Obama? He was a first-term senator with few legislative achievements and a worrying penchant for honesty (in his autobiography he admitted to using marijuana and even cocaine, “when you could afford it”). He knew how to give a good speech. But how could that compare with Mrs Clinton’s assets—a well-oiled political machine and a winning political formula that combined a carefully-calibrated appeal to the centre with hard-edged political tactics?

Today, Mrs Clinton has not only lost the Democratic nomination. She has humiliated herself in the process. She has been forced to lend her campaign more than $11m of her own money. She has cosied up to some of her former persecutors in the “vast right wing conspiracy”, notably Richard Mellon Scaife, a newspaper magnate. She has engaged in phoney populism, calling for a temporary break on petrol taxes, praising “hardworking Americans, white Americans”, vowing to “totally obliterate” Iran and waving the bloody shirt of September 11th. The conservative Weekly Standard praised her as “a feminist form of George Bush”. So how did one of America’s most accomplished politicians turn a cakewalk into a quagmire?

Read the rest of the article.

Obama: I will be the Democratic nominee

WASHINGTON (CNN) — In what he called a “defining moment for our nation,” Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday became the first African-American to head the ticket of a major political party.

Obama’s steady stream of superdelegate endorsements, combined with the delegates he received from Tuesday’s primaries, put him past the 2,118 threshold, CNN projects.

“Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America,” he said.

“Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”

Obama’s rally was at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota — the same arena which will house the 2008 Republican National Convention in September.

Speaking in New York, Sen. Hillary Clinton, congratulated Obama for his campaign, but she did not concede the race nor discuss the possibility of running as vice president.

There were reports earlier in the day that she would concede, but her campaign said she was “absolutely not” prepared to do so.

“This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight,” she said.

Congratulations, Senator Obama!

Senator Clinton, I do not see a VP slot in the near future for you, and I obviously do not think that you should continue to fight.

In the interest of Party unity, I am going to try to stop bashing you … but you’re not making it easy.

Senator Clinton, I think you made a serious mistake tonight. On the night that your opponent clinches the nomination, you only offered a cursory congratulations, and kept the focus of your speech on yourself, not on the issues, and not on the Party, and not how we defeat McCain in November … it smacked of sour grapes.

You came across as a poor loser, and this is not going to sit well with many Democrats, and especially not Senator Obama. As such, I would be stunned if you were offered the VP slot.

One of your supporters, like Evan Bayh or Ed Rendell, yes. But you, Senator Clinton? No.

I think that you will be of much better value to the Party and to the nation as a major power-broker in the Senate. I think that you still have an extremely important role to play in the political scene, and I, for one, will never consider this year to be your “political obituary”. Keep your focus on universal healthcare and getting it passed through the Congress; and if/when a Supreme Court seat opens up … the do everything you can to ensure that we get another progressive justice, rather than another conservative justice who will continue to erode our rights.

You’re not through … you’re just not Presidential material.

Now let’s bring the Party back together, solidly behind Senator Obama. Let’s march forward, and donkey-kick some Republican elephant butt!

Carter: After June 3, it will be time for Clinton to ‘give it up’

(CNN) — Former President Jimmy Carter said Sunday that in a little more than a week, when the last Democratic primary voters weigh in, it will be time for Hillary Clinton to “give it up.”

Carter told Britain’s Sky News that Clinton “had a perfect right” to keep running – but that “a lot of the superdelegates will make a decision quite, announced quite rapidly, after the final primary on June 3,” he told Sky News Sunday.

“I have not yet announced publicly, but I think at that point it will be time for her to give it up,” he added.

Carter, a superdelegate, has not made endorsement but has spoken out frequently in favor of Barack Obama.

Obama leads Clinton among superdelegates and has captured the majority of pledged delegates up for grabs this primary season.

Clinton explains RFK assassination reference

BRANDON, South Dakota (CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton said Friday that she regretted comments that evoked the June 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy as part of her explanation for why she was staying in the presidential race late into the primary season.

Earlier Friday afternoon, she told the editorial board of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Argus Leader that “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said.

Clinton complained that “people have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa” and said that position “historically … makes no sense.”

Later at an event in Brandon, South Dakota, she said, “Earlier today, I was discussing the Democratic primary history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Sen. Kennedy waged in California in June in 1992 and 1968, and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nominating primary contests that go into June. That’s an historic fact.”

Senator Clinton —

One of the reasons why earlier nominations weren’t wrapped up until June is because many of the larger states (like California) didn’t hold their primaries until June … but that changed this year with about half of the states holding their primaries on Super Tuesday back in February.

When you have large states holding off until the end of the primary season to cast their ballots, it’s definitely possible that the nomination won’t be wrapped up until later in the year. But this year, it essentially became mathematically impossible for you to get the nomination several weeks ago.

This is one of the reasons why people have been pushing for you to drop out of the race … Obama has the momentum and has had for a long time. You are a powerful woman, and would make a formidable Senate Majority leader, but despite winning as many votes and delegates as you have, you are far too divisive to truly be successful in the general election against John McCain.

It’s time to bow out … gracefully. There is a place for you in government, but not in the White House.

Please, Hillary … for the sake of the Party, please bow out.

From the Huffington Post:

Superdelegates Turned Down $1 Million Offer From Clinton Donor

One of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s top financial supporters offered $1 million to the Young Democrats of America during a phone conversation in which he also pressed for the organization’s two uncommitted superdelegates to endorse the New York Democrat, a high-ranking official with YDA told The Huffington Post.

Haim Saban, the billionaire entertainment magnate and longtime Clinton supporter, denied the allegation. But four independent sources said that just before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Saban called YDA President David Hardt and offered what was perceived as a lucrative proposal: $1 million would be made available for the group if Hardt and the organization’s other uncommitted superdelegate backed Clinton.

Contacted about the report, Saban, initially very friendly, became curt. “Not true,” he said, “it’s simply not true.” He declined to elaborate. Did he talk to the YDA superdelegate? “I talk to many, many superdelegates. Some I don’t even remember their names.” Did he propose any financial transaction? “I have never offered them or anybody any money” in exchange for support or a vote, he said. The Clinton campaign did not return a request for comment.

How typical … she can’t win the nomination naturally, with the support of a majority of the voting public, so now she’s attempting to buy the nomination.

Good job, Hillary … thanks again for showing us just how low your campaign is willing to stoop to steal the nomination (and then lose the election with you continued divisiveness).