InkBlogs' First Official Campaign Endorsement

Well the absentee ballot is in the mail as of a few minutes ago, and given our anticipated rapid ascension to the peak of political media, InkBlogs thought it appropriate to release an official campaign endorsement.

After great deliberation, we have concluded that Barack Obama will make the better president of the two candidates. This is not to detract at all from the great respect and admiration I still hold for John McCain as a Senator and American hero. In spite of a celebrated tenure in the Senate, McCain proved to be less of an astute campaign manager. While I acknowledge the very difficult balancing act he had to perform, McCain's campaign showed that you can shout "Maverick" from Washington to Alaska, but your message will be considerably muffled if you're stuck in the pocket of the hard Right. David Brooks commented in a Newshour interview, "You have to reform your own party before people trust you to reform the country." If anyone could do it, I thought it would be John McCain, but McCain let the opportunity slip through his hands and probably the presidency as well.

Obama showed profound professionalism in the executive capacity of managing a long and arduous campaign. His amazing ability to rally votes, expand the democratic process, conduct unprecedented fundraising, and maintain a calm respectability about him will surely translate into an effective chief of state.

But, after all, we don't vote for a campaign manager but for a president. In the end, this election should be about issues. I believe McCain had a far more sound approach to Iraq, but the success of the Surge has made the issue more or less a moot point in the campaign. Obama, on the other hand, promises to bring a new face to foreign diplomacy that has been much anticipated by the rest of the world ever since the Clinton presidency.

Obama's tax policy is hotly contested, but my vote on this issue arises from an intuition that that Bush tax breaks worked in the wrong direction. Tax breaks in the top tier proved not to effectuate the desired trickle-down effect, but rather lead to unhealthy market speculation.

I don't think of the Obama tax plan as wealth redistribution as much as a framework for keeping money where it will most probably be spent on consumption of necessities, while taxing at higher rates those income groups that delegate a greater portion of their wealth to luxury spending. This may inhibit the diversification of the economy, but it reinforces those markets on which our general welfare is most dependent. Besides, the middle and lower classes are precisely the groups that need to be targeted now to help curb defaults on home mortgages. Bush's "Ownership Society" would never be effectuated by giving those who already own everything more disposable income by which they can own even more. Higher margins of savings and disposable income are best maintained in the middle and lower class where "Joe the Plumbers" (I'm sick of the phrase too) can buy into the markets and make capital investments of their own.

Which brings us to the matter of the capital gains tax. I agree with conservatives that now is the worst time to raise the capital gains tax as Obama proposes to do; however, Obama also has a less-popularized proposal to completely eliminate the capital gains tax on small business. This should result in a shift of financing and investment toward small business and entrepreneurship. That means that when Joe the Plumber starts his plumbing business (or has a change of heart and decides to start his own biomedical research or IT consulting company), he'll find more willing investors. In my mind this allows more flexibility to break from the established big business economic frameworks by spurring productivity-enhancing innovation and entrepreneurship.

I'm constrained from breaking down the campaign issue by issue, but based on my analysis, which points at times to McCain and at times to Obama, a thorough examination of the totality of issues points convincingly toward Obama.