“It is difficult to remember the last national candidate who has charged and jazzed the democratic system as Mr. Obama has. Partly as a result of his candidacy, college campuses have remembered why they are proud of the United States, kids are going door to door, runners are handing out leaflets on weekends, racial lines have been culturally melted and the electoral approach to presidential campaigning has been reborn. And, as more than one commentator has said, America is being reintroduced to the world.”
An endorsement closer to home: The New York Observer endorses Barack Obama for president. “[W]hen George W. Bush was driving a bleary, shocked nation into war with bait-and-switch deceptions in 2003, where was our experienced leadership? Meanwhile, in the west, an Illinois state senator — who has since served three years in the Senate, the same Congressional period that a fellow Midwesterner, Abraham Lincoln, had served when he sought the presidency — rose to exhibit courage and public judgment on that deceptive adventure, stating, ‘I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.’…His relationship to truth and plain speaking and public transparency is the first step toward reviving democracy in the United States of America. Barack Obama of Illinois is the future. New York’s Democrats should embrace him.”