THE FREE-LANCE STAR makes no endorsement in the contest for the presidency. Both major-party candidates, we believe, have significant strengths, and both weaknesses. Our disinclination to endorse derives from our inability, weighing all factors, to confidently and consensually discern a clearly superior choice. It in no way reflects the idea that this election is unimportant. On the contrary.
The times and the world are troubled, requiring the very best national leadership. Between now and Election Day, it behooves all of us to set aside loyalties of the pettier sort, mere emotion, and habitual ways of thinking to honestly contemplate, like citizens newly minted, issues and men--and finally to cast our votes in a manner that, besides serving perceived interests of the moment, honors America's heritage and her promise. Among the questions we urge you to ask yourselves, as we shall, are these:
America has tended to thrive when taxes are low and the hand of government light. Yet the creative destruction of markets can be cruel and the lords of capital reckless, periling the commonweal. Which candidate is apt to both appreciate the economic freedom that boosts living standards and protect workers, investors, and pensioners from the ruinous avarice of boardrooms where decency's chair sits empty?
The national debt approaches $10 trillion, excluding the $700 billion newly committed to saving Wall Street. Which candidate is more likely to develop a cogent plan--neither now has one--to meet federal obligations to the elderly (via Social Security and Medicare) and poor (via Medicaid), and to all of us via national defense, while beginning to shrink that cancerous debt? Which candidate is less promiscuous in his appetite for new federal programs? Which is more credible in his promises to streamline government--and to see that Washington's truly legitimate functions are competently performed?
Which candidate more greatly respects federalism--the doctrine that states matter and that most public problems should be solved at the state or local level?
In foreign affairs, which candidate will withdraw U.S. troops more responsibly from Iraq? Which will conduct the war in Afghanistan more effectively? With which will you feel safer when sabers, perhaps bearing nuclear symbols, rattle in Iran, North Korea, China, or even Russia? Which candidate is better suited to repair America's tattered alliances and restore America's standing in the eyes of the world's leaders and peoples? Which can better distinguish American exceptionalism from American arrogance?
Which can be better trusted to ensure the integrity of America's borders while extending a welcoming hand to law-abiding newcomers? Which is likely to speak more effectively to a an increasingly heterogeneous nation, and to communities and individuals of mixed race?
Which candidate is more likely to confront ominous global climate trends soberly? To protect America's wilderness and other public resources from spoil?
Which is more likely to appoint judges who judge rather than legislate?
Gridlock, which stymies reform, occurs when partisans lock arms and refuse to budge. Which candidate has a more tangible record of independence? Which has been more willing to reach across the aisle? Which is more likely to force a truce in the "battle of the tribes"--coalesced around issues such as abortion, guns, torts, unionism, and public education--and change the whole tenor of Beltway politics? Has either made promises that, if kept, would calm the culture wars? Or, conversely, throw kerosene on the campfires of those wars?
Which candidate is better able to inspire the country deep and broad? To restore a healthy participation in the rites of democracy? To set us on a truly optimistic course? Will either actually challenge us to make a sacrifice in some noble purpose, defying a zeitgeist that leaves us consumptive freeloaders on the patrimony of the past?
No doubt the list of questions is incomplete. Amend it. Surely you will find, as we do, that neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama is the better answer to every query. And so weigh the importance of each issue and make a calculation. Then vote.
For this is a pivotal hour in history. The world is angry and unsettled. America is unsettled. As the still-greatest nation, most capable of leading the others by noble example, we must settle and right ourselves. It is no light thing you will do Nov. 4 to choose the leader of the leader.