Chicago Tribune Endorses Obama

This is significant as the headline indicates, it's the first time the Chicago Tribune has endorsed a Democrat--including when another Dem. candidate from Illinois, Adlai Stevenson ran in 1952 and 1956.

Obama Picks up First Tribune Democratic Endorsement
By Larry Rohter AND Kitty Bennett

For the first time in its 161-year history, the Chicago Tribune is endorsing a Democrat for president.

The newspaper, which has links to the Republican Party that date back to the founding of the G.O.P., said Friday that Senator Barack Obama is the strongest choice “to lead us through a perilous time and restore in us a common sense of national purpose.”

With that startling departure, the Tribune joined a growing list of large daily newspapers across the country that have stated a preference for the Democratic nominee over Senator John McCain, his Republican rival. A quick survey shows Mr. Obama winning the backing of an overwhelming majority of dailies with circulations over 100,000 that have already made endorsements. Mr. McCain has won the endorsements of The New York Post and The Boston Herald, among others.

Several of the newspapers that have endorsed Mr. Obama cited his youth and freshness on the national scene, along with Mr. McCain’s age, as factors in their decision.

“Not since John F. Kennedy has a presidential candidate so moved a young generation,” wrote The San Jose Mercury News, while The St. Louis Post-Dispatch noted that “the 25-year difference in the ages of Mr. McCain, 72, and Mr. Obama, 47, is important largely because Mr. Obama’s election would represent a generational shift.”

The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times also endorsed the Democratic candidate this week, as did the Spanish-language dailies La Opinion in Los Angeles and El Diario -La Prensa in New York.

But none of those statements of support was as surprising as that of the Tribune, whose early leaders helped found the Republican Party and aided Abraham Lincoln in securing the Republican nomination for president in 1860.

In its endorsement, The Chicago Tribune noted that it was breaking with a long tradition. But it justified the shift by citing what it called Mr. Obama’s “honor, grace and civility” under pressure and criticizing Mr. McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, which it described as a failure of judgment in which Mr. McCain put his campaign ahead of the country’s needs.

“We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions,” the newspaper said of Mr. Obama. “He is ready.”

Mr. Obama, of course, represents the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, the Tribune’s home turf. But Gov. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956, was also from Illinois and failed to secure the paper’s support when he ran against Dwight D. Eisenhower, as did Senator Steven Douglas, a Democratic nominee in 1860.

No one knows to what extent, if at all, voters are influenced in their decisions by the endorsements of their hometown newspapers. But several of the dailies that have come out in favor of Mr. Obama are in battleground states where the Obama campaign is sure to trumpet their support as it pursues independent, undecided voters.

Numerous other newspapers, including The New York Times, have not yet stated a preference for either Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama. During the primary season, The Times endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic nominee and Mr. McCain as the Republican candidate.

Getting the backing of The Chicago Tribune is not the only first in the way of campaign endorsements that Mr. Obama has scored this year. Esquire magazine is also backing him, the first time in that magazine’s 75-year history that it has declared a preference for a presidential candidate, and so are publications as different as the music monthly Vibe and the trade publication Internet Retailer, which said he would provide “a stable economy in which e-commerce can flourish.”