Powell Endorses Obama

McCain camp tries to make it racial?  Or did McCain finally fall back into the old truth talking for a few seconds.

Excerpt LA Times "It's official: Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama" :

Retired Army Gen. Colin L. Powell, an adviser to the last three Republican presidents, said today that he is crossing party lines to support the Democratic candidate for the White House.

“I think he is a transformational figure … and for that reason, I’ll be voting for Barack Obama,” Powell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“We need a president who will not just continue … basically the policies that we have been following in recent years,” said Powell, who once briefly considered his own run for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. “We need a president who is a generational change.”

Powell, 71, who was President Bush’s first secretary of State and served Bush's father as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ronald Reagan as national security advisor, said he believed that Obama had the style and substance to be successful in the role at a time when America must be better represented and involved on the world stage.   He cited a need to speak to world figures “who we have not been willing to talk to before.”

“This is a time for outreach,” Powell said.

...despite his long friendship with and admiration for the Republican nominee, John McCain, Powell said he was concerned about the Arizona senator's approach to those same two issues. "I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having, and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem," Powell said of McCain.

A commenter at the site says that John McCain  said he wasn't surprised that Powell endorsed Obama and asked if the Republican presidential candidate was making a racist statement.  I'm no fan of the current iteration of McCain's personality, but that sounds like the old McCain.  The one we miss.  I'd even like to vote for the old McCain except for the right wing policies and comfort with war.

tags: colin powell  john mccain  barack obama  political endorsements  politics  

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