John McCain for U.S. president

We don’t subscribe to the notion, which we hear from certain quarters, that America’s very survival might well rest on the result of this presidential election.

But the condition of our economy for the next couple years sure does.

And that matters a lot to all of us.

After comparing the two candidates’ prescriptions for our ailing financial system, we’re convinced that Americans would fare better under a John McCain administration than under one led by Barack Obama.

That’s why we urge voters to cast their ballots for McCain.

The most significant difference between McCain’s and Obama’s economic platforms involves their tax plans.

McCain thinks all Americans should turn over a smaller percentage of their income to the federal government.

Obama thinks people who make less than $250,000 per year should pay a smaller percentage, but people who earn more than that should pay a larger percentage — about 3 percent more of their income, from 36 percent to 39 percent.

Obama’s proposal might appeal to people who want to stick it to the rich, but we’re afraid what it will actually do is stick it to everyone.

Let’s face facts: Most lower- and middle-class Americans don’t own businesses. But they work for someone who does — and a lot of those someones will make less money if Obama turns his tax plans into law.

(Which he almost certainly would do as president, given a Democrat-led Congress to work with.)

But we don’t want the wealthiest Americans to surrender more of their money to the government, because the less money they have, the fewer jobs they create.

That’s the insidious nature of Obama’s effort to make America’s income tax system more progressive than it already is.

Obama’s plan might hurt rich people a little, but by stifling job creation the plan will hurt people of lesser means a lot.

Think of it this way: The modest tax relief that Obama’s proposal would give to middle-class Americans won’t do much for the people who lose their jobs.

Aside from economic matters, we’re not in the least persuaded by the allegation that electing McCain is tantamount to giving George W. Bush a third term.

The two share a party affiliation, of course, but McCain strays far from the Bush line in several crucial issues.

McCain has been a vocal opponent of America’s policy of torturing enemy combatants in the war on terror, a tactic the Bush administration continues to defend.

The Obama campaign has emphasized McCain’s support for the war in Iraq as evidence of McCain’s blind allegiance to Bush’s policies, yet Obama seems incapable of acknowledging that those policies have led to successes as well as failures.

In particular we note the achievements of the “surge” that started earlier this year — an increase in the number of American troops in Iraq which McCain endorsed.

Obama, meanwhile, continued to insist as recently as mid-summer that the surge had failed.

More recently, in a television interview in early September, Obama conceded that the operation had “succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated” and “succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.”

Well, maybe not “nobody.”

McCain advocates for laws and regulations designed to combat global warming and its potentially disastrous effects.

On that topic, in fact, McCain and Obama are more alike than they are apart.

Yet McCain’s broader views on the environment and on energy policy demonstrate a realism and a pragmatism that we find lacking in Obama.

Specifically, McCain wants to vastly expand America’s domestic oil production — including opening offshore areas to drilling for the confirmed, and significant, oil deposits there.

McCain has, however, said he opposes drilling in Alaska’s controversial Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a position that puts him at loggerheads not only with Bush, but with his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Obama, by contrast, has said he would consider opening the way to offshore drilling, but his statements on the subject are noteworthy more for their ambivalence than for any specifics.

As for America’s security and the war on terror, both prominent campaign issues not long ago, have been largely replaced in the past month or so by the economic crisis, yet they remain crucial matters.

And they are the matters in which a candidate’s experience is perhaps most vital.

Here, too, we favor McCain.

He has served his country as a Navy pilot.

He was elected to two terms as a congressman and is in his fourth term as a U.S. Senator.

Even Obama, who has yet to finish his first term as a Senator, recognized the value of legislative experience when he picked as his running mate Joe Biden, whose tenure in Washington, D.C., surpasses even McCain’s.

Barack Obama is a smart man, an accomplished man, a good man. He is qualified to serve as president.

But we don’t believe that Obama’s brief tenure in the U.S. Senate, and his obvious charisma and skills as a public speaker, are the equal of McCain’s decades of experience and unimpeachable record as an independent thinker.

We do believe that right now, Obama is a far better presidential candidate than he would be a president.

John McCain is our choice for the next president of the United States.