Boston Globe: McCain y Obama

El endorsement del Boston Globe no tendría mayor impacto en el reducido mundo que componen los primeros estados en albergar primarias, si no fuera por su destacada proyección regional. No es sólo el diario más vendido en la ciudad de Boston y el estado de Massachusetts. Es también el de mayor tirada en toda la región de Nueva Inglaterra, donde se sitúa New Hampshire, cuya población está muy expuesta al mercado mediático de Boston. Ahí radica la importancia de la decisión del Boston Globe de dar su apoyo a los senadores John McCain y Barack Obama en sus respectivas aspiraciones. Para el republicano, que ya tiene el endorsement del Union Leader, supone una confirmación de su tirón en NH como alternativa a Mitt Romney. Aunque no sea un periódico apreciado por los republicanos, sí tiene su peso entre independientes. Para el demócrata es un gol por toda la escuadra contra Hillary Clinton.

For Republicans: John McCain

(...) CONVENTIONAL wisdom among political handlers used to hold that a candidate needed to capture the political center. The last two presidential campaigns proved that wrong. The Republicans scraped out victories by pressing just enough buttons and mobilizing just enough voters. But such wins breed political polarization and deprive a president of the political capital needed to ask Americans to sacrifice in difficult times.

The antidote to such a toxic political approach is John McCain. The iconoclastic senator from Arizona has earned his reputation for straight talk by actually leveling with voters, even at significant political expense. The Globe endorses his bid in the New Hampshire Republican primary.

McCain is a conservative whose views differ from those of this editorial page in a variety of ways. He opposes abortion rights. At least in the current election cycle, he has shown no particular quarrel with his party's knee-jerk view of tax cuts as the cure to the nation's economic problems. (...)

For Democrats: Barack Obama

(...) THE FIRST American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must. The most sobering challenges that face this country - terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics - are global. America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has this understanding at his core. The Globe endorses his candidacy in New Hampshire's Democratic presidential primary Jan. 8.

Many have remarked on Obama's extraordinary biography: that he is the biracial son of a father from Kenya and a mother who had him at 18; that he was raised in the dynamic, multi-ethnic cultures of Hawaii and Indonesia; that he went from being president of the Harvard Law Review to the gritty and often thankless work of community organizing in Chicago; that, at 46, he would be the first post-baby-boom president.

What is more extraordinary is how Obama seals each of these experiences to his politics. One of the lessons he took from organizing poor families in Chicago, he says, was "how much people felt locked out of their government," even at the local level. That experience anchors his commitment to transparency and accountability in Washington. (...)