As the endorsement says, it would have been real easy for the Yale Daily News to endorse Hillary Clinton. After all, she went there, and it's essentially in her back yard.
They however, decided to go a different route.
It is a strong endorsement too, stating that while Yale has held a grip on the White House, it is now time to Yale to step aside for a change, and it goes on to sing the praises of Barack Obama.
Too often asserted is the notion that one should run for the presidency with a crystal-clear, unchanging slate of party-line policy initiatives. With Obama’s candidacy, however, comes an opportunity to correct this flawed conception of the chief executive as a glorified policy wonk. Our legislative system, after all, is designed to encourage compromise and cooperation. Overwhelming majorities for a single party are rare enough that a combative, polarizing politics that insists on a fixed agenda is self-defeating. Solid policy planks, then, are only half of the battle. What we must know — and do know in Obama’s case — is which philosophy a candidate would bring to the West Wing. And we are impressed by his deep-rooted belief in one nation, not two.
Yale makes sure to stick with the theme of the last week though as they end the column, with another cry out for the return of Camelot:
Forty-eight years ago, John F. Kennedy, whose daughter endorsed Obama this week as “a president like my father,” visited the New Haven Green in the hours before the election. Thousands came. Hope filled a depressed town.
Electing Barack Obama — another candidate who could surely fill the Green — would reclaim part of that era. But it would achieve more. An Obama presidency promises a reassertion of the natural, American optimism for which JFK stood, but also new reforms of which he could only have dreamt.
Let us not let this moment slip away.
The full endorsement can be read here.
We need change. No more dynasties, no more status quo, no more politics of division.
We can have all of that. We just need the right candidate to win. That right candidate is the one getting Yale's endorsement.
Updated: Okay, there was a comment in here about the younger set getting it, but clearly there are plenty of older folks too, so comment deleted.