"The U.S. is in need of a sea change," said the Toronto Globe and Mail in an editorial, after eight years of a George W. Bush presidency that diminished the nation's moral and economic might. Electing Barack Obama—a hope-inspiring leader who would be America's first black president—would be "an epoch-defining moment, one with the potential to propel the U.S. forward, ever closer to the noble purposes set out in its founding documents."
The U.S. is at a "philosophical tipping point" all right, said Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal. Obama and other "modern, 'progressive'" Democrats are hoping that the "political planets are aligned" to let them move the U.S. "in the direction of Western Europe" by tightly regulating business to support an expanded welfare system. "This would be a historic shift, one post-Vietnam Democrats have been trying to achieve since their failed fight with Ronald Reagan's 'Cowboy Capitalism.'"
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