The Economist endorses Obama: a "thumping" likely

[amborin]

"It's time

Oct 30th 2008

From The Economist print edition

America should take a chance and make Barack Obama the next leader of the free world

AP
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, 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. 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 outfought 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."





<http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12516574>

"To 270…and beyond
Oct 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Local polls are predicting a bad night for John McCain and big changes to the landscape of American presidential politics


FOR the past 14 weeks, starting with Ohio back in August and ending last week in Pennsylvania, our correspondents have fanned out across America’s swing states, the ones that we guessed would be most likely to determine this year’s fiercely fought election. It is now time to put together everything we have learnt along the way. The news is bleak for John McCain.

Under the system handed down by the wary framers of America’s constitution, the president is not elected directly, but by an electoral college in which each state casts a number of votes roughly proportional to its population. With two tiny exceptions (see article), states cast their votes in a block for whichever candidate wins the most votes there.

This means the overall popular vote is much less important than the vote in a dozen or so states where the race is particularly close. That is why America’s three largest states—California, New York and Texas—have been once again irrelevant to this presidential election. The first two are so reliably Democratic, and the third so reliably Republican, that they have not been contested at all. (Over time this can change hugely: post-war California mostly voted Republican until 1992, whereas Texas, like most of the South, was usually Democratic until the 1980s.)

To win the presidency, a candidate needs to secure a majority of the 538 electoral-college votes. Firmly Democratic or Republican states leave neither candidate with anywhere near the magic number of 270: hence the hustle for the swing states.

When the general-election campaign got under way after Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination in June, most analysts reckoned about 12 or 13 states were up for grabs, carrying with them about 150 electoral-college votes. The unexpectedly strong showing of Mr Obama has pushed the number of states in contention up a bit: at the start of the contest, no one imagined that such states as Indiana and Montana, both of which George Bush won last time by 20 points, could be regarded as close. Now they are.

The most dramatic change, though, is how the swing states are swinging. In 2004 Mr Bush defeated John Kerry by 286 electoral-college votes to 252, so all Mr McCain needed was to hold onto those states to win again. He could even afford to lose a couple of smaller ones, like Colorado (nine college votes), or New Mexico (five).

To add to his chances, Mr McCain had some hope of capturing a few states that voted Democratic in 2004: he has always been popular in New Hampshire (four votes), where he beat Mr Bush in the presidential primary in 2000, and where this year his primary victory started his road to the nomination. He also had reason to believe that culturally-conservative blue-collar Democrats, who voted en masse for Hillary Clinton in the primaries and who pollsters said had big doubts about Mr Obama, might give him Pennsylvania (21 votes) or Michigan (17) or Minnesota (ten) or Wisconsin (also ten). These four depressed industrial states voted only narrowly for Mr Kerry, by margins of 2.5, 3.4, 3.5 and 0.4 percentage points respectively.

But none of this has come to pass. According to RealClearPolitics.com, which runs polls of polls for all 50 states, each of the five McCain targets is now “solid” for Mr Obama, meaning he has an average lead of ten or more points in recent polls. Mr McCain still entertains hopes of a game-changing upset in Democratic-controlled Pennsylvania, the sixth-biggest state in the union. But with an 11-point mountain to climb, his chances there look very iffy. Mr McCain’s battle, therefore, is strictly a defensive one.

<snip>

And not one that he is winning. Going back to the 2004 battle, the Democrats’ losing margin was 34 electoral-college votes, meaning they need to switch states worth only 18 votes to win. Seven of these votes now seem be in the bag: Iowa looks solid for Mr Obama. Mr McCain’s honesty has been his problem there. He has made no attempt to hide his opposition to subsidies for ethanol and for the bloated farm bill in general; and he barely bothered to contest Iowa’s caucuses. Barring scandal, crisis or extreme incompetence on the part of the pollsters, Mr Obama therefore needs to find only 11 more votes.

There are only so many places to look. The Pacific West and the north-east are all firmly Democratic already: the Great Plains firmly Republican. So Mr Obama has been hunting in three regions: around the Great Lakes, which means Ohio, nearby Missouri and (incredibly) Indiana, since the rest is Democratic already; in the Mountain West; and most remarkably in the South. If the polls are to be believed, he is on the verge of repainting these last two areas, almost entirely Republican red for the past two elections, a fetching shade of purple.

Mr Obama’s chances look best in the Mountain West. Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada all lean his way (by which the pollsters mean he has an average lead of more than five points but less than ten). And amazingly, Mr McCain is only marginally ahead in Montana. All four states already have at least one Democratic senator apiece, and Colorado, Montana and New Mexico have Democratic governors. But they are all small states: victory here will not a landslide make.

More is at stake around the Great Lakes, but it is a hard fight. Ohio (see article) has always been one of America’s most finely-poised battlefields. The polling there is erratic, but Mr Obama seems to be in with a good chance; if he takes Ohio, with its 20 votes, a solid victory is in the making. In Indiana and Missouri, the polls are nail-bitingly close, with Mr Obama very narrowly in the lead in both.

Were he to win just one of these three, all Republican in 2004, that, coupled with Iowa, would put him over the edge. Thanks to his vastly greater campaign chest, and his superior get-out-the-vote mechanisms, he could win all three, painting the whole of America’s north-eastern quadrant Democratic blue.

It is probably the South, though, that will be most closely watched on election night. According to RealClearPolitics’s averages, Mr Obama is ahead in three southern states: Virginia (by an almost unassailable average of 7.6 points), Florida, with its rich haul of 27 electoral-college votes, by an average of 3.5 points, and most remarkably, perhaps, by 1.3 points in North Carolina. Virginia and North Carolina have much in common.

Both these old southern states have been Republican for decades: Virginia last voted Democratic in 1964, North Carolina in 1976. But both have undergone big demographic changes. Northern Virginia has become a yuppified suburb of Washington, DC; Charlotte, North Carolina, is America’s biggest financial centre after New York. In both, a large black vote coupled with a large upscale white vote looks favourable for Mr Obama. Even Georgia now seems to be in play.

Florida, as so often, is a case all by itself, with a big anti-Castro vote among Latinos offsetting the Democratic leanings of long-standing local blacks and retired east-coasters. Until a few weeks ago, Mr McCain could depend on this 27-vote electoral treasure. But America’s property collapse is acutely felt in Florida, and Mr Obama is narrowly ahead here as well. If Florida goes his way and all the other states in which he leads follow suit, Mr Obama is looking at winning 30 states and 375 electoral-college votes.

Given America’s huge internal and external problems, that is a little surprising: even at best, Mr Obama cannot expect a landslide like Franklin Roosevelt’s first win in 1932 or Ronald Reagan’s in 1980. He might, though, secure a thumping victory like Bill Clinton’s first hurrah in 1992, when he made deep inroads in both the South and the Mountain West. Even if he does not match that, the polls have him on track for a far better margin than the painfully narrow ones of the past two elections."