Newspaper Endorsements: Winston-Salem Journal

The Winston-Salem Journal has endorsed Barack Obama’s re-election:

Under Obama’s policies, including the successful bailout of General Motors, the country averted what could have been a far worse economic disaster, maybe even a depression. The economy is slowly recovering — the national unemployment rate has finally fallen below 8 percent — and the president’s policies of continued government investment in infrastructure and education offer the best hope that the recovery will accelerate. Obama promises to cut spending and raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but keep taxes where they are for the vast majority.

Romney’s policies — warmed-over trickle-down economics — will make matters worse. We say that with a caveat, however, because Romney’s plans are ever-changing and it is hard to know just where his policies would end and those of the much more conservative Ryan would begin.

On national security, Obama has gotten American combat troops out of Iraq while winding down the American presence in Afghanistan. He has used American military might to fight international terrorism to a degree that no one anticipated in 2008. He showed strong leadership in ordering the successful raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The Obama foreign policy — as seen in Libya — requires our allies to handle a great share of our common defense burden, especially when the interests at stake are dearer to those allies.

We like the president’s stand on Iran, slowly but steadily undermining the Iranian economy rather than launching a premature military strike and setting off another Middle East war.

In contrast, Romney and his supporters have rattled the saber at Iran. Despite Romney’s efforts in the last few days to tone it down as he tacks to the middle, his foreign policy seems to come straight from George W. Bush. Some of Romney’s foreign-policy advisers are the former Bush neo-conservatives who got us into the unnecessary Iraq war.

The Journal endorsed John McCain in 2008.

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