When political endorsements boomerang

Nearly every metropolitan area in America has an independent weekly newspaper that prides itself on arts and entertainment coverage filtered through the collander of progressive politics, often in preening contrast to the allegedly corporatist agenda of daily newspapers in the same locale. The avatar of this phenomenon in North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill "Triangle" is the Independent Weekly, which has a "Religious Left" column but not a "Religious Right" column.

As anyone familiar with the genre would have guessed, the Independent Weekly figures that "after eight years of Dubya," its readers are bound to feel downtrodden, paranoid, penniless, hopeless, or "all of the above."

The editors also think that a junior senator from Illinois has the cure for our national hangover, and this week decided to present Triangle readers with a list of "Top Ten Reasons to Endorse Barack Obama."

I find the list instructive in an appallingly clinical way, because it reveals a shallowness of thought that would embarrass any self-respecting Petri dish. Reason one, for example, is "all combat troops would be withdrawn in 16 months, starting with an immediate pullout of one to two brigades."

I'm no fan of open-ended military commitments, but even Obama's own web site hedges on this point, perhaps out of late-blooming deference to the judgment of generals whose troops are in Iraq. Obama's Plan leads with the elements that excite progressive newspaper editors (to hell with what generals or Iraqis themselves might say!), and then adds a codicil the Independent forgot to mention: "if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes on al Qaeda."

As to the other parts of Obama's "Iraq plan" ("Press Iraq's leaders to reconcile, engage in regional diplomacy, exercise humanitarian initiative")-- boy howdy if that doesn't sound exactly like what the Bush administration is already doing.

Another reason to vote for Obama, according to the Independent, is that "his plan for criminal justice reform includes expanding hate crime statutes." This is a plus? The candidate's own web site plays possum on exactly how federal hate crimes statutes will be strengthened, but the only people who could reasonably applaud a goal like that are people who have never read George Orwell's 1984. When a candidate for president seeks to criminalize an even higher percentage of thought, which is what expansion or strengthening of hate crimes statutes inevitably entails, then the electorate should take a very hard look at that candidate indeed. Astonishingly, Independent editors see no potential downsides to expanded hate crimes legislation. Hey, I'd like to see Rev. Jeremiah Wright do prison time, too, but I don't think that's what the Obama camp has in mind.

As the newspaper's 10-item list draws to a close, theoretically advantageous policies make way for puffery of the egregiously unsupported kind. We're told, for example, that Barack Obama "unites people, rather than divides them." Doubtless this sounded good to editors hoping their man contrasted favorably with polarizing figures like Hillary Clinton and John McCain, but it's not Cindy McCain who said that her husband's candidacy made her proud to be an American for the first time in more than 20 years. Moreover, as James Taranto and Fred Barnes have both pointed out, Obama is not much of a "uniter." Taranto looked at his association with Jeremiah Wright. Barnes looked at his modest Senate record.

Both Barnes and Taranto did more research than editors at the Independent Weekly seem capable of doing.

While calling Obama a unifying figure is not as farfetched as describing Jimmy Carter as "philosemitic," the truth is that Obama only has résumé enough to run for junior partner in a law firm. In sports terms, the man is a varsity benchwarmer whose handlers have artfully applied mud to his football uniform for the team picture. Editors at newspapers like the Independent Weekly are audaciously hoping the rest of us don't notice.