New Yorker Endorses Obama's 'Uplift and Realism'

At a critical moment in its history, the United States "needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness"—and Barack Obama is the man to deliver it, writes the New Yorker in a 4,000-word endorsement. After George W. Bush, whose presidency has been "the worst since Reconstruction," America requires a leader who understands the severity of the economic crisis and the complexities of foreign affairs, but also restores the country's "battered morale."

One of Obama's greatest virtues is his "pragmatic calm," an equanimity in the face of tough attacks that reminds one of Eisenhower. Unlike John McCain, who has demonstrated himself to be "impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker," Obama offers America a leader of character, "a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe." (More Barack Obama stories.)