On Endorsements: Esquire & Powell

To be honest with you, I've always thought that when you're running for office, getting the endorsement of a publication -- your hometown newspaper -- was important, but not critical.

On down-ballot races, I suspect there are plenty of folks who, if they like their newspaper, just check the endorsements and vote that way.  There are probably a few, who, if they dislike their hometown fishwrapper, go the other way at the ballot box.

Same thing is kind of true for celebrity endorsements.  If you like Matt Damon, and don't follow politics even a little bit, then maybe you'll vote for Obama because he will.  Or, if you really, really disliked the Bourne series, then maybe you'll go McCain.

Actually, I think things change a little bit at the presidential level. 

Esquire magazine -- a fashionable men's magazine, or a men's fashionable magazine; anyway, it's glossy and nice and the stuff in there is way too cool for me, so that should tell you something -- has come out with a strong endorsement for Barack Obama.

Why am I telling you this?  Because they make a great point:

John Paul Stevens was born on April 20, 1920, into a family of hotel magnates in the city of Chicago who, when Stevens was still young, lost everything in the Great Depression. In 1936, when John Paul Stevens was a student at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and preparing to enter the University of Chicago proper, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was born on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya. In 1941, when John Paul Stevens was graduating Phi Beta Kappa and preparing to go and break Japanese naval codes and help shoot down Admiral Yamamoto in the South Pacific, Ann Dunham was born in Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. In 1961, when John Paul Stevens was practicing law, Barack Obama and Ann Dunham married and had a son, whom they also named Barack Hussein Obama. In 1975, when President Gerald Ford named John Paul Stevens to replace William O. Douglas on the United States Supreme Court, the elder Obama was long gone and the younger Obama was a freshman at the Punahou School in Honolulu. In January of 2009, if and when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the forty-fourth president of the United States, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens will be closing in on his thirty-fourth year on the Court and his eighty-ninth year on earth. And there, really, you have it. The best argument for the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is written quite clearly in the peaks and squiggles of John Paul Stevens's EKG.

So much is at stake in this election -- and the Supreme Court ought to be right at the top of your list.  The next president is likely to make at least two appointments to the Supreme Court, and maybe more.  A McCain presidency will guarantee you a far-right conservative court for a generation.

The Esquire piece is actually very well written, quite eloquent.  I encourage you to read it. 

But if getting your political advice from a magazine that kind of smells like very expensive men's cologne is not your thing, then try this on for size:  Colin Powell has endorsed Senator Obama.  His endorsement is equally -- perhaps more -- eloquent than Esquire's.

Now, whether you have made your mind up about Obama or not, it is important that you watch the clip of Secretary Powell on Meet The Press. 

Of course, I think Secretary Powell is talking about more than just an endorsement of one candidate over another (although he does clearly endorse Obama).  He's talking about the direction the country has gone with regards to "us versus them" politics.

And he talks about a soldier who gave his life in Iraq.  Twenty years old.

It's important that you hear this story.  I just hope other politicians will listen to it as well.