Leading into perhaps the most important election of our lifetime, with the contrast so stark between the directions the nation will head under one or the other of the presidential candidates, the News-Press reiterates its wholehearted endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama for President of the U.S., of Mark Warner for the U.S. Senate, and, for the three congressional districts in our immediate distribution area, of Rep. Jim Moran, Chairman Gerry Connolly and Judy Feder for Congress.

The electricity we’ve experienced every time visiting the large campaign headquarters of Sen. Obama blocks from our office in downtown Falls Church only confirms for us that the nation is veritably on fire with enthusiasm for a fundamental change in the course of the nation’s political and social leadership. In the closing weeks of the campaign, Sen. Obama has strengthened his image as a mature, intelligent leader committed to steering the nation through tough economic times in a dangerous world, including by drawing around himself a team of first-rate economic and foreign policy advisers, while his opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain has, in our view, disgraced himself with a sequence of bad and ill-conceived decisions. Those began with the naming of a politically expedient, but patently unqualified person as his running mate, with his reaction to the onset of the financial meltdown (just after insisting the economy was sound) by calling for the firing of Christopher Cox of the Securities and Exchange Commission, an intemperate move he swiftly withdrew, and especially with his decision to go negative, to the extreme, with a vicious attack campaign against Obama. In the meantime, he’s offered nothing positive of his own but worn-out Republican anti-tax rhetoric.

In the case of former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, an intelligent and innovative thinker who is a rising star in American politics, he brings a distinctive outlook ready and capable of tackling the new problems and opportunities of the 21st century. His opponent, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, proved he was incapable of running Virginia as its governor, leaving it with a crushing deficit, and he is stuck, like McCain, in the ideological and dogmatic stagnation of a calcified GOP.

Rep. Jim Moran remains one of the most principled and effective lawmakers in Congress as he moves into his tenth term representing the 8th Congressional District. Best, by far, for filling the 11th District House seat vacated by Rep. Tom Davis this fall, is Fairfax County Board Chair Gerry Connolly with a proven record of bright, innovative leadership in the county, by contrast to the socially and fiscally right wing and backward promises of Republican Keith Fimian. In the 10th District, it is time for the arch-conservative Bush ally, Rep. Frank Wolf, to go. In her second run against him, Judy Feder has shown the grit, determination and expertise, to make a fine representative.