Last updated: 11:24 am
September 8, 2008
Posted: 4:30 am
September 8, 2008
THE Post today enthusiastically urges the election of Sen. John S. McCain as the 44th president of the United States.
McCain's lifelong record of service to America, his battle-tested courage, unshakeable devotion to principle and clear grasp of the dangers and opportunities now facing the nation stand in dramatic contrast to the tissue-paper-thin résumé of his Democratic opponent, freshman Sen. Barack Obama.
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McCain has been in Washington for many years now, but he is not of Washington. He knows where the levers of power are located - and how to manipulate them - but he is not controlled by them.
McCain's selection of the charming, but rock-solid, outsider Sarah Palin as his running mate underscores the point.
Neither plays well with others.
And this is an unalloyed asset at a time when special interests - lobbyists, lawyers and organized labor chief among them - wield enormous influence in the nation's capital.
McCain's Democratic opponents, Obama and Sen. Joseph Biden, lead a party constructed of special interests - public-employee unionists in particular.
There are many reasons to support the McCain-Palin ticket. Here are but a few:
* National security: The differences between McCain and Obama are especially stark.
McCain says 9/11 represented a two-decade "failure . . . to respond to . . . a [growing] global terror network." He understood that Iraq is a critical front in the war on terror - and he urged perseverance even in the dark days that preceded the success of "the surge."
Obama backed policies that would have abandoned Iraq to its fate, he bitterly opposed the surge, and once insisted that US forces invade Pakistan in search of Osama bin Laden - seemingly without regard for the potential consequences of attacking a nuclear-armed nation, ally or not.
Regarding a nuclear Iran, McCain has pushed for the strongest possible international sanctions and diplomatic pressure. Obama opposes sanctions.
And, when Russia invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia, threatening a return to the Cold War, McCain reacted with stern disapprobation: "We must remind Russia's leaders that the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world require their respect for the values, stability and peace of that world."
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