If the country ever needed new direction under a fresh, steady, calm president, this is the time. Sen. Barack Obama is the country's hope, the kind of promising, intelligent leader who comes along perhaps once in a generation.

Obama is the best candidate for president. He has the vision, patience and fortitude to put America on a track to recovery after an eight-year run of financial irresponsibility, aggressive adventurism abroad and mismanagement, secrecy and dissembling on numerous fronts.

The issues and the superiority of the Obama-Joe Biden team have become clearer than ever in the past few days. Obama spoke the unvarnished truth when he called the need for a record-breaking economic rescue plan a "final judgment." It was a sweeping verdict not just on the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush but also on the Republican deregulatory obsessions that Sen. John McCain has shared broadly.

Over the weekend, McCain and his campaign began what may be a go-for-broke, desperate attempt to save the Republican control of the White House by swamping the country with irrelevant, negative slander of Obama as a dangerous radical. The real issues have nothing whatsoever to do with the attempt to ignite fear over the fact that the resolutely optimistic, well-balanced Obama has had scant connection with a onetime radical.

As never before in the lifetimes of any but the Greatest Generation, the country faces challenges at home and abroad. Overcoming hurdles, building for the future and making us more secure financially and strategically will require a president with Obama's clear desire and surpassing ability to speak to all Americans.

At home, rebuilding the economy will test the next president, even one like Obama who warned relatively early of the mounting home mortgage problems. His willingness to regulate will be critical to again providing adequate protection against reckless conduct in the country's financial system. He has recognized that he will have to adjust some of his plans to recognize the federal budget's deteriorating position. That's what needs to be understood now. We don't expect restoring budget responsibility will be anything but difficult, but as former President Clinton showed, a Democrat is likely to be the better choice, or the only one, for balancing the budget. We have little faith in what would happen on any financial issues under McCain, whose party has deliberately metastasized the nation's debts and who has relied on ideologue ex-Sen. Phil Gramm for economic counsel.

Obama has been reasoned in his proposals for dealing with health care, where economic insecurity most directly threatens Americans' lives. We think he should endorse a single-payer system, not least for how it would help U.S. competitiveness economically, but at least he understands the need for universal coverage. McCain's obsession with the free market is so deep that he would help fund new health care accounts by attacking the most successful parts of medical coverage, Medicare and Medicaid. That's a formula for putting the country even further behind other countries in treating health care as a universal right.

We see considerable hope for the country, especially the Pacific Northwest, in Obama's energy and environmental policies. He's shown the kind of focus and vision that will be needed to treat energy independence as both a new opportunity and overriding challenge, along the lines of John F. Kennedy's leadership on putting an American on the moon.

Creating a clean-energy economy will be a first step to putting America's leadership on behalf of democracy and human rights in the world on a firmer footing. As Obama recognizes, military strength cannot be sustained without economic power.

Obama would approach the world in a way that breaks from the tough-guy orientations of McCain and the administration he has enthusiastically supported. Obama got the fundamental question of war in Iraq right, while McCain adopted a Cheney-like intemperance in his advocacy for invasion and his warnings about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist links.

Obama has shown the judgment, temperament and confidence to deal with world leaders in ways that advance this country's values respectfully. Diplomacy would again be fundamental, not an afterthought on the way to war. Restoring America's standing in the world requires a president who stands for America's people, their future and their values.

When financial troubles here are shaking the rest of the world, it's more important than ever to have a president with vision for a better future for Americans, their country and its friends around the world. Sen. Barack Obama is the president for restoring hope in America.