Choosing a candidate to endorse

It has become customary during the time of an election for newspapers to endorse a candidate. This practice is seemingly defiant of the industry’s golden rule of remaining objective. Despite that, the Waltonian has decided to make an attempt to endorse a candidate for the presidential election.

As reported in our Feb. 13 edition, of 246 Eastern students surveyed, 46 percent identified themselves as Republican, 22 percent Democrat, 21 percent Independent and 11 percent as “other.”

If the Waltonian were to represent the majority, we would logically endorse a Republican candidate. Since there is only one Republican candidate, our support would fall to Sen. John McCain.

However, another statistic revealed in our Feb. 13 survey showed Sen. Barack Obama as the leading candidate in the popular vote at Eastern, at 32 percent. The three Republican candidates, at the time, combined for only 27 percent of the popular vote.

Sen. Obama’s campaign has been built around a promise for “change.” His bold proposals for tax cuts and health care reform are aimed specifically at improving the quality of life for all Americans, especially those less privileged. It’s hard as Christians not to be drawn to a candidate whose humanitarian goals sound a lot like those of Jesus.

Pertaining to faith, the Republican Party has been ridiculed for remaining “attached” to particular issues: gay rights, abortion and stem cell research as examples. According to most Democrats, Republicans’ reluctance to approve such issues because of values is not a good enough reason to vote a particular way. It should cause us to wonder though, what makes it unreasonable to make a decision based on beliefs?

Although many Republican voters are not thrilled with Sen. McCain as a candidate, they will most likely vote for him nevertheless because they believe his values are more in alignment with theirs.

In conclusion, the Waltonian will respectfully decline from endorsing a candidate as we set out to do in this article, and thus remain as a newspaper should be: objective. Certainly there are good arguments to be made for each of the three remaining candidates, but in the end, everything is subjective.

Inquiring Minds is the collective opinion of the editorial staff and not necessarily representative of the entire staff. It is written by the editor-in-chief and the managing editor.