A Prized Selection

Barack Obama was endorsed today in an especially cogent editorial by the newspaper that is a monument to Joseph Pulitzer, who funded the prizes for excellence in American culture and established the Columbia School of Journalism.

Obama, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch declares, "is right on the issues. He was right on the war in Iraq. He is right that all Americans deserve access to health care and right in his pragmatic approach to meeting that goal. He is right on tax policy, infrastructure investment, energy policy and environmental issues. He is right on American ideals.

"He was right when he said in his remarkable speech in March in Philadelphia that 'In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.'”

Noting that they had backed John McCain in the Republican primaries, the Post-Dispatch editors conclude that then McCain "became the incredible shrinking man. He shrank from his principled stands in favor of a humane immigration policy. He shrank from his universal condemnation of torture and his condemnation of the politics of smear.

"He even shrank from his own campaign slogan, 'Country First,' by selecting the least qualified running mate since the Swedenborgian shipbuilder Arthur Sewall ran as William Jennings Bryan’s No. 2 in 1896."

Going beyond the red herrings about Obama's character and inexperience being hawked by the McCain campaign, the editorial notes, "A presidency is defined less by what happens in the Oval Office than by what is done by the more than 3,000 men and women the president appoints to government office. Only 600 of them are subject to Senate approval. The rest serve at the pleasure of the president.

"We have little doubt that Mr. Obama’s appointees would bring a level of competence, compassion and intellectual achievement to the executive branch that hasn’t been seen since the New Frontier. He has energized a new generation of Americans who would put the concept of service back in 'public service.'”

All of this leads back to the credo of the founding father, Joseph Pulitzer, who promised that the paper "will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty."

Pulitzer would undoubtedly have approved of today's choice.

Do the Clintons Really Want Obama to Win?

Amid all this year's psychodramas about gender, race and age, consider the conflict in the heart and soul of the 42nd President of the United States as he looks back at his past and ahead to his place in history.

This week Bill Clinton gave Barack Obama lunch in his Harlem office, a promise to do "whatever I'm asked" in the campaign and a prediction that Obama "will win and win handily" in November.

But nothing is simple in Clintonland. The day before, the former President had another visitor, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, head of the "vast right wing conspiracy" that had financed his impeachment. They talked cozily about doing good in the world, just as Hillary had met with the editorial board of Scaife's Pittsburgh newspaper and won their endorsement in this year's primary.

Since there are no permanent friends or enemies in the Clintons' lives (ask Bill Richardson), their support of Obama requires close parsing.

Without his own marital melodrama, there would be little reason to doubt Clinton's sincerity about seeing Obama as a logical heir to his and JFK's Democratic legacies. But the bruising primary season and Hillary Clinton's future hopes can't be left out of the equation.

At times this year, Bill Clinton seemed to be subverting his wife's campaign out of pique in what Maureen Dowd called "a self-pitying meltdown about not being Elvis anymore" and, even worse, out of some twisted need to undermine the woman who stood by him. After the contest was over, he reportedly told friends that Obama would "have to kiss my ass" to get his support.

Now, to make matters even stickier, there is the complication of Sarah Palin. If John McCain, with a woman as his running mate, wins in November, the Democratic door is open for Hillary Clinton in 2012.

This means that both Clintons have to be careful in campaigning for Obama not to alienate diehard supporters who saw sexism in this year's defeat and would be a core part of her support the next time around. Those who refuse to back Obama would take it amiss if either Clinton went after Palin.

So for both Clintons, there is personal risk in going all out to get Obama elected.

The "Profiles in Courage" question is: Will they put their country and their party first? Or is it silly to ask?

Clinton's Three Speeches in One

Last night, she knitted together soaring rhetoric from an acceptance speech as presidential nominee, some attack-dog sound bites expected of a running mate and finally a plea for party unity behind Barack Obama.

But behind the virtuoso performance was the impression that the former First Lady's heart still belongs, less to her passionately professed love of Democratic Party ideals, than to the doomed candidacy that brought her thisclose to making history.

The emphasis on mothers, daughters and granddaughters only deepened the sense that Hillary Clinton still sees her loss not as the failure of a flawed campaign based on a glaring sense of entitlement but as a blow against womankind.

With the unspoken premise of Obama's victory as an insult to an entire gender, Clinton gave him full-throated support as a generic candidate but failed to offset with specificity a whole season of her attacks on him as inexperienced and unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

Despite the burblings of Keith Olbermann and other cable pundits about the speech as "a grand slam," it looked more like a safety squeeze to score without risk or all-out effort.

"Yes, We Can"

Hillary Clinton was truly remarkable today, making the most difficult speech of her life and finding her voice as a national leader over and above that of a politician seeking office.

Coupling pride in her own achievement on behalf of all women, she rallied them to the imminent cause of backing Barack Obama in restoring their country to its best self--to "take our energy, our passion and our strength and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama...I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me."

She encouraged party unity, acknowledging the hard fight and the disappointment of her supporters, while reminding them that "the Democratic Party is a family, and now it's time to restore the ties that bind us together."

Clinton's full-throated endorsement had a heartfelt quality that should quiet critics who see her as cold and manipulative, culminating in her raising the Obama banner of "Yes, We Can."

For those of my generation, she brought to mind an old song popularized by Bing Crosby in the 1930s:

Three little words, oh what I'd give for that wonderful phrase,/To hear those three little words, that's all I'd live for the rest of my days./And what I feel in my heart, they tell sincerely./No other words can tell it half so clearly./Three little words, eight little letters which simply mean I love you.

Today Hillary Clinton got the words and the music just right.

Rupert Murdoch's Funny Valentine

Who knew that the Fox News media mogul had such a sense of humor? His New York Post's editorial endorsing Barack Obama should become a comedy classic.

"For all his charisma and his eloquence," the Post writes, "the rookie senator sorely lacks seasoning: Regarding national security, his worldview is beyond naïve...

"His all-things-to-all-people approach to complicated domestic issues also arouses scant confidence. 'Change!' for the sake of change does not a credible campaign platform make."

But what sterling qualities does Obama possess that would make him a good choice for president on Super Tuesday? "(H)e is not Team Clinton."

Not being a Clinton is a supreme virtue: "His opponent, and her husband, stand for déjà vu all over again--a return to the opportunistic, scandal-scarred, morally muddled years of the almost infinitely self-indulgent Clinton co-presidency...

"A return to Sen. Clinton's cattle-futures deal, Travelgate, Whitewater, Filegate, the Lincoln Bedroom Fire Sale, Pardongate--and the inevitable replay of the Monica Mess?

"No, thank you."

From this guarded assessment of the Clinton years emerges a ringing endorsement: "At least Obama has the ability to inspire. Again, we don't agree much with Obama on substantive issues. But many Democrats will."

With friends like Murdoch, a candidate could go far. Did Bill O'Reilly get the memo?

The Clinton-Kennedy Chasm

On the heels of Caroline Kennedy's paean to Barack Obama as the heir to her father's political ideals come reports that the family patriarch, Sen. Ted Kennedy, will endorse Obama, too.

For weeks now, JFK's alter ego Ted Sorensen has been campaigning for the Illinois Senator, underscoring the continental divide in American politics between the dynasties.

The famous picture of a starry-eyed young Bill Clinton in 1963 shaking Kennedy's hand is now an ironic reminder of the political and temperamental differences between the two.

Both came to office after enormously popular Republican presidents, Eisenhower and Reagan, but JFK overcame his political caution, learned from mistakes and earned respect for an idealism that, unlike Clinton's, strengthened during his tenure and earned respect across the ideological landscape.

Kennedy was a skeptic by nature, but he was not capable of the cynicism that Bill Clinton has been showing in the attempt to get his wife to the White House.

The Kennedy dynasty is over, but its heirs may play a significant role in ensuring that the Clintons' never materializes.