http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/20/opinion/main4532217.shtml(The New Republic) This column was written by The Editors of The New Republic.The past eight years have been like watching a TV makeover show in reverse. We entered the Bush era a ravishing beauty attracting envious stares. We leave it a gum-smacking sad sack with split ends and an empty social calendar. Over the course of George W. Bush's second term, in particular, the images of our country have not just been unattractive but virtually apocalyptic: a major city destroyed; cars raining into the Mississippi from a crumbling bridge; swaths of exurbia dotted with foreclosed homes; a financial system in ruins; angry emotionalism flooding politics.
There are many causes of this bleak age, and not all of them can be laid at the feet of the president. But there's no doubt that Bush has run down the one engine capable of making our vast economic and physical infrastructure function properly: the federal government. He has disregarded the tenets that have guided the state since the Progressive Era--deference to disinterested expertise, an apolitical civil service, reliance on regulation to protect the common good. The ethos of the executive branch under his command has been one of "heckuva job" hackery and anti-intellectualism. So the next president will not just inherit an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis, an infrastructural crisis, and, oh yes, two wars, an overstretched military, and a looming Iranian threat. He will inherit a government weakened to the point that it has become ill-equipped to protect the well-being of its citizens.
It's hardly surprising that, as a matter of policy, we overwhelmingly prefer that Barack Obama win the prize of dealing with this mess. But it is his temperament and smarts that give us some hope that he can do more than manage the damage wrought by Bush--that he can actually take advantage of the once-in-a-century opportunity presented by the current crisis and transform the American state.
Any endorsement comes with doubts. We have our share. With a candidate lacking in experience, how can you not? We wish that he had greater fluency in the global economy and the financial system he will likely remake. In foreign policy, Obama's slender record offers few clues. At moments--for instance, during his shaky response to Russia's invasion of Georgia--we ourselves have had jitters.
But we also have hopes that Obama will govern as the person who revealed himself in this campaign. On the whole, he has turned in one of the more impressive performances in recent political history--demonstrating an ability to explain complex ideas in plainspoken English, impeccable managerial skills, evenness of temper, avoidance of sloppy errors, and pragmatism, not to mention that he can really deliver a speech.
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