Nature Endorses Obama

Nature — One of the two lead­ing inter­na­tion­al sci­ence jour­nals — has an edi­to­r­i­al endors­ing Sen. Barack Oba­ma. Appar­ent­ly, this is the first time in the pres­ti­gious jour­nal’s 139 year his­to­ry that it has ever endorsed a can­di­date — for US pres­i­dent or otherwise.

a com­mit­ment to seek­ing good advice and tak­ing seri­ous­ly the find­ings of dis­in­ter­est­ed enquiry seems an attrac­tive attribute for a chief exec­u­tive. It cer­tain­ly mat­ters more than any spe­cif­ic pledge to fund some par­tic­u­lar agency or ini­tia­tive at a cer­tain lev­el — pledges of a sort now large­ly ren­dered moot by the unpre­dictable flux of the economy.

 
This jour­nal does not have a vote, and does not claim any par­tic­u­lar stand­ing from which to instruct those who do. But if it did, it would cast its vote for Barack Obama.