The Financial Times endorses Barack Obama: "Obama is the better choice"

By GottaLaff

Obama is the only choice:

US presidential elections involve a fabulous expense of time, effort and money. Doubtless it is all too much – but, by the end, nobody can complain that the candidates have been too little scrutinised. We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr Obama is the right choice. [...]

Nonetheless, a campaign is a test of leadership. Mr Obama ran his superbly; Mr McCain’s has often looked a shambles. After eight years of George W. Bush, the steady competence of the Obama operation commands respect. [...]

[G]ambles do not always pay off. [McCain's] choice of Sarah Palin as running mate, widely acknowledged to have been a mistake, is an obtrusive case in point. Rashness is not a virtue in a president. The cautious and deliberate Mr Obama is altogether a less alarming prospect.

Rest assured that, should he win, Mr Obama is bound to disappoint. How could he not? He is expected to heal the country’s racial divisions, reverse the trend of rising inequality, improve middle-class living standards, cut almost everybody’s taxes, transform the image of the United States abroad, end the losses in Iraq, deal with the mess in Afghanistan and much more besides.

Succeeding in those endeavours would require more than uplifting oratory and presidential deportment even if the economy were growing rapidly, which it will not be.

The challenges facing the next president will be extraordinary. We hesitate to wish it on anyone, but we hope that Mr Obama gets the job.

And some insight, via DKos:

For those of you not familiar with the paper, here's a little background:

The FT was launched as the London Financial Guide on January 9, 1888, by Horatio Bottomley, renaming itself the Financial Times on February 13 of the same year. Describing itself as the friend of "The Honest Financier and the Respectable Broker", it was initially published as a four page journal from its headquarters in London. The initial readership was the financial community of the City of London. The Financial Times soon established itself as the sober but reliable "stockbroker's Bible" or alternatively "parish magazine of the City", with its only rival being the slightly older and more daring Financial News.

http://en.wikipedia.org/...

They currently publish editions worldwide :

In 1997, the FT launched the U.S. edition, which is now printed in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Orlando and Washington, D.C., although the newspaper was first printed in the United States outside of New York City in 1985. In March 2006, the FT's U.S. circulation was 137,845.

In September 1998, the FT became the first UK-based newspaper to sell more copies internationally than within the UK. Worldwide circulation stands at 432,548 (Source: ABC July 2006), with global readership estimated at over 1.6 million people in more than 140 countries.

Here's where they stand politically:

The Financial Times is normally seen politically as centrist, in contrast to its right-leaning principal competitor, The Wall Street Journal, owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It advocates free markets and is generally in favour of globalisation. During the 1980s it supported Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's monetarist policies. However, it has recently seemed to have aligned itself with Labour in the UK. It also has been quite supportive, until recently, of Gordon Brown, the current British Prime Minister. FT editorials have tended to be pro-European Union, though often taking a critical view. Noam Chomsky has said that it is "the only paper that tells the truth".[12]

GObama!