Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry picked up endorsements from The New York Times as well as from dailies in Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boston, while the papers in Dallas and Chicago backed President George Bush.
Kerry’s ”wide knowledge and clear thinking” are the makings of ”a great chief executive,” the Times said in a lengthy editorial 16 days before Americans go to the polls on November 2.
While Kerry’s candidacy initially seemed mostly to tap into public dissatisfaction with Bush, over time ”we have come to know Mr Kerry as more than just an alternative to the status quo,” the Times said.
As for Bush, the Times had few kind words in calling for the end of his presidency, which the paper’s editors referred to as ”disastrous”.
The daily enumerated a litany of complaints — from the war in Iraq to tax cuts for the well-to-do, to his ”disrespect for civil liberties and inept management” — in calling for his dismissal.
”We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted,” the Times said.
The Times was the first daily with a national readership to make its endorsements, less than three weeks before the November 2 election.
Other leading newspapers like The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal have yet to unveil their choices.
The Times‘s backing is one of the most coveted and influential of any endorsements during the US presidential campaign, although given the newspaper’s somewhat left-of-centre tendency, not entirely unexpected.
With early voting beginning in some places on Monday, a raft of smaller and regional US dailies also took sides on Sunday, most of them lining up behind the Democrat from Massachusetts.
The Dallas Morning News, from Bush’s home state of Texas, was an exception, declaring: ”Americans want and need a president with a backbone steeled by courage and a heart tendered by compassion”.
Bush also won the backing of the Chicago Tribune, which said: ”Bush’s sense of a president’s duty to defend America is wider in scope than Kerry’s, more ambitious in its tactics, more prone, frankly, to yield both casualties and lasting results.”
The Manchester Union-Leader in the tiny northeastern state of New Hampshire also rallied behind Bush, citing ”the need for his continued leadership in the global fight against Islamist terrorism”.
But several other papers joined the Times in backing Kerry — including the Dayton Daily News of Dayton, Ohio, the Star-Tribune of Minneapolis, Minnesota, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The paper from Boston, Massachusetts, Kerry’s home town, said it had long seen his core strengths as ”an ability to see complex problems in new, often prescient, ways and a willingness to seek collaborative solutions.”
San Francisco is a known bastion of liberalism, but the other papers are located in so-called swing states with large numbers of undecided voters and strong voices in the electoral college, which ultimately decides the US presidential election.
The Miami paper saw in Bush ”a stubborn refusal to accept the uncomfortable facts and a simplistic approach to complicated issues.”
The well-respected Saint Petersburg Times in Florida also endorsed Kerry, calling him ”an intelligent, principled leader who has demonstrated his commitment to his country on the battlefield and in public service”.
The Minnesota paper said Bush had ”plunged the nation into debt and injected the government into the most personal of family matters” and ”governed with mendacity and secrecy”.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, in the key up-for-grabs state of Pennsylvania, said ”the incumbent lacks the realism, judgement and ability to adjust to events that the United States needs in its commander in chief. In this perilous moment, the safer choice, the wiser choice, is John F. Kerry.”
It was unclear whether the endorsements would sway undecided voters but the flood of editorials in his favour looked likely to energise the Kerry camp and boost the momentum the Democrat has enjoyed since his solid performance in the three presidential debates. – Sapa-AFP