One “full-throated endorsement” just out, however, bears greater notice and careful voter scrutiny.The New Yorker magazine, in its October 29^th issue, has provided an extremely detailed critique of President Obama’s many accomplishments and struggle to right the sinking ‘ship of state’ left by his predecessor. Following are a few key excerpts from their endorsement:

Obama succeeded George W. Bush, a two-term President whose misbegotten legacy, measured in the money it squandered and the misery it inflicted, has become only more evident with time. Bush left behind an America in dire condition and with a degraded reputation. On Inauguration Day, the United States was in a downward financial spiral brought on by predatory lending, legally sanctioned greed and pyramid schemes, an economic policy geared to the priorities and the comforts of what soon came to be called “the one per cent,” and deregulation that began before the Bush Presidency.

In 2008 alone, more than two and a half million jobs were lost—up to three-quarters of a million jobs a month. The gross domestic product was shrinking at a rate of nine per cent. Housing prices collapsed. Credit markets collapsed. The stock market collapsed—and, with it, the retirement prospects of millions. Foreclosures and evictions were ubiquitous; whole neighborhoods and towns emptied. The automobile industry appeared to be headed for bankruptcy. Banks as large as Lehman Brothers were dead, and other banks were foundering. It was a crisis of historic dimensions and global ramifications. However skillful the management in Washington, the slump was bound to last longer than any since the Great Depression.

The article goes on to further define the scope of the challenges Obama faced, and list the many positive steps he took, not just in the area of our woeful economic situation but, also—vis a vis—the foreign policy mess he inherited, with the morass of two raging Mideast wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an American reputation abroad in shambles.