Obama is on campaign trail while McCain takes spotlight

Obama is on campaign trail while McCain takes spotlight

Democrat Barack Obama made history last week by becoming the first black presidential nominee of a major political party. But whether this history is prologue will depend on how the U.S. senator from Illinois conducts himself on the campaign trail.

His acceptance speech Thursday night in Mile High Stadium in Denver — it was witnessed by more than 80,000 Democratic Party faithful — confirmed what many Americans already knew: Obama is one of the most eloquent speakers in politics today.

But words alone will not sway the voters.

The Democratic nominee must not only define his candidacy in terms of the general election, but offer specific solutions to the problems he contends have been created during the eight years of Republican President George Bush’s tenure.

A close race

Indeed, most polls show the race between Obama and the Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain of Arizona to be close, especially in such battleground states as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Ohio, for instance, has lost more than 200,000 high paying manufacturing jobs during Bush’s presidency, and yet the president carried the Buckeye State four years ago. That win provided him with a second term.

Ohioans obviously did not believe then Democratic challenger John Kerry, had made a strong enough argument for replacing the president.

Likewise, Ohio voters are waiting to hear how Obama and McCain will address the myriad problems that are contributing to the downturn of the economy. At the top of the list is the loss of high paying factory jobs. A great many of those have gone abroad, where workers are paid poverty-level wages and companies do not have to adhere to environmental standards.

Because of policies adopted by the federal government, states like Ohio have been forced to compete on an uneven playing field.

McCain, who will accept his party’s nomination on Thursday, made a bold move late last week to neutralize Obama’s historic convention. The veteran legislator selected as his running mate the governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, whose r sum is still being evaluated.

Experience issue

It is clear, however, that Palin has limited experience in the national and international arenas. And that prompts the question: How does her selection square with McCain’s contention that Obama does not have the experience or the knowledge of foreign policy, for instance, to serve as president?

Obama has been in the Senate for three years and is a member of the foreign relations committee. Before going to Washington he served in the Illinois Legislature.

But to McCain, that is insufficient preparation for the highest office in the country.

To blunt such criticism, Obama selected veteran Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the foreign relations committee with a long and impressive legislative record, to his running mate.

Since the vice president is only a heartbeat away from the presidency, an objective analysis of Biden’s long tenure in Congress leads to the conclusion that he is ready to occupy the White House if called on to do so.

We cannot say the same for Palin, who has been governor of Alaska for two years, and before that was mayor of a city about the size of Hubbard.

This week, when McCain and the Republicans take center stage in St. Paul for their four-day convention, we would hope that the reasons for his turning to a virtual unknown in national politics will become clear.

We can only hope that McCain did not bow to pressure from the right wing of the Republican Party, which has accused him of being too moderate, and select an individual primarily on the basis of her conservative credentials on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage.