The Woodchip Gazette Endorsement for President of these United States of America

The present election has presented the American People with a stark choice between marching forward toward a new vision for the future or holding fast to half-baked measures rooted in the policies of the past.

On the Homeland Front, the presidential contest has presented Americans with a choice between economic policies aimed at feeding the rich in the hope that more crumbs will thereby fall to ground or using extended powers of government to insure equitable and secure allocations of wealth through direct jobs creation, progressive taxation and guaranteed livable minimum wages. Likewise, it has confronted Americans with a choice between health insurance for profit or true universal health care for all; between higher education that provides a true start in life versus crushing indebtedness; between retirement programs managed by the same banksters that have brought us global financial collapse or government guaranteed social security for all.

On the issues of civil and constitutional rights, the campaign has confronted Americans with a choice between limiting the intrusive powers of government to regulate personal choices and to spy on personal activities or allowing the bogus threats of "terrorism" "drugs" and "pornography" to intimidate them into accepting the dubious security of a police state.

On the foreign policy front, the presidential race has offered Americans a choice between pursuing by "adjusted" means essentially the same unilateralist and aggressive policies of the Bush Administration or fundamentally altering our policies so as to end a bankrupting war, restore our trashed diplomatic standing and work toward reestablishing cooperative international institutions focused on maintaining peace. Similarly, the campaign has given the American electorate a choice between sticking with trade policies that were designed to promote corporate plunder at the expense of the environment and ordinary people at home and abroad or between radically reoriented policies designed to promote real environmental protection as well as sustainable and equitable economic development.

In short, the election cycle that is at last coming to a close has offered the Country a choice between true and fundamental change or sticking with the same old free market, free trade and free-fall ideology of the past albeit with some minor readjustments and cosmetic refurbishments. The importance of the election cannot be understated and the Editorial Board of the Gazette has given the utmost thought and attention to its all important endorsement.

But as the old adage has it, "politics is the art of the possible" and, on balance, as much as we woodchippers favor radical and fundamental change, the likelihood of a massive write-in for Dennis Kucinich is not in the cards and so, in the alternative,  the Gazette endorses Barack Obama in the belief that rehashed acorns are better than none.

©WCG, 2008