It's time for change
By Staff
Fresh off Barack Obama's speech last week and preparing for John McCain's acceptance speech scheduled for Thursday night, this is the time for all of us -- if we so choose -- to get our political fix.An overwhelming majority of Americans have told Gallup and Zagat and the other pollsters that the United States has lost its way. If we are really interested in finding our way back, it's time for a change -- and that is not meant as a political endorsement for Obama. Indeed, this newspaper endorsed McCain very early this year.
We are fairly certain that, whether Republican or Democrat, reversing course from the most damaging, ill-conceived and un-American directions into which we have wandered will be one of the new president's initial tasks.
The new president should back away from wiretapping all our phones, for instance, and maybe even put judicial review squarely back in the mix.
Maybe he should give some thought to shutting down Guantanamo Bay and ending the most despicable chapter in American history.
Perhaps he will even take a serious look at why the economic divide in this country has grown to chasmic proportions, with no sign of abating. And at how and why the middle class is disappearing, the American Dream evaporating.
While he's at it, maybe President McCain or President Obama will do something helpful for the increasing millions without health insurance, the growing number without food security and the swelling ranks of the unemployed, those who have lost their homes and the millions whose golden years have tarnished.
It's a tall order, but the new president will take all this on because we will make him.
We believe the public is way ahead of the politicians. If we weren't, fewer of us would tell the poll takers that we have lost our way, floundering in the darkness.
We're ahead of the politicians because we want to find our way back, and the ones currently in office apparently don't. We hope the new president, whichever one he is, will do much better.