Eternity can seem to one experiencing it a long time indeed.  It is especially so when one’s mortal remains are cooped up in a crypt, and you are exposed to a processional of persons wearing “baseball” caps upon their heads, many of whom are equipped with small wires carrying music to their ears.  And most certainly so when one has occupied the chair of the President, and has been forced to spend seven years of said eternity pondering the exceptionally dangerous governance of that most affrighting of successors – your current Chief Magistrate, Mr. Bush.  With that most eager hope that someone shall read this transmittal of my thoughts from beyond the veil, I, President John Adams, have ventured forth this evening upon your Inter-Net, and provide to you my whole-hearted endorsement for the office of the Presidency the Senator from the State of Illinois, Mr. Obama. 

It may surprise those of you acquainted with my Administration to learn that a Federalist such as myself might break a silence of one hundred and eighty some years for such an odd purpose.  Yet it is my hope to acquit myself well in explaining my motives and reasonings in doing so, that you yet may choose wisely in the instant election.  So first then – why does a Federalist endorse Senator Barack Obama for the First Magistracy?  It would be facile to jest that I do so because there is no Federalist running – both because mere party affinity was never my motive but only true loyalty to these United States, and of course because the Federalist party has ceased to exist, save that it lives in your greatness.  My reasons are these—

Mr. Obama is your best hope for reaching past the perniciousness of faction.  This great issue of my time is also the issue of yours; so history is in all things a cycle returning to itself and replaying itself for Man.  Faction enslaves men by division, turning patriot against patriot and State against State.  Senator Obama is a man who has shown his friendship and loyalty to those who are not with him; he consorts with your Hagel, resolving matters of policy in league with him, with your Lugar, to keep the vast land of Russia free from terrible weapons of great destruction.  He calls upon himself the wrath of your own Faction’s orthodoxy in recent weeks, to stamp himself as a man not bought by any, who governs to his conscience.  Senator McCain cannot say thus of himself; does any among you doubt that he is beholden to the basest intriguers within his ranks – for he cannot prevail without the schemers who laid him low in South Carolina?  The vile pamphleteers of Fox and the minions of Rove are schemers worthy of Hamilton and Bache.  Do not suffer their tool to sit upon the Chair of the Chief Magistrate, for discord and faction will be your sure and sole reward.

War is a great reason to do, or not to do, many a thing.  As I said of the need to avoid conflict with France, great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.  And yet that guilt stains the history you now make.  While America has become the world-straddling empire of my hopes and dreams, it must not seek war, for to do so would neither be just nor worthy of its greatness.   Our Republic is not a creature of Caesars, nor Napoleons.  While your Senator McCain is a good fellow, making him First Magistrate would plow a deeper channel than that already worn by your Tyrant George, with your history flowing ineluctably into an ocean of Permanent War that is not the peace our Declaration of Independency and Union aspired to from the days in Philadelphia and years of struggle through which we threw off the yoke of tyrants.  Our greatest feat was the handing of the sword to the civilian man; and the governance by reason and right over force.  Do not hand the Magistracy to another from that Party of Eternal War or you make of your heroic Armies Gods to lord over you.  Mr. Obama will serve you better than that.

Liberty’s call is another of my reasons.  Mr. Obama is truer to what is Just, what Noble, in affairs of policy.  I can hear my critics, see with my shut eyes the echoing charges trumpeted in their false pamphlets, urging me a Tyrant like George, that I pleasured in the stifling of dissent.  And yet I always held true to the need for a Bill of the People’s Rights.  Mr. Jefferson and I were always one in that (and yet remain so!).  In my simple days, the States were held by invisible threads, thin and frayed.  A great issue of my time was Union; and my sacred duty to preserve it led me into measures I did later regret.  Yet your Tyrant George cannot claim that Union impels him to stifle dissent.  You have so many laws, so many bonds, such great sinews binding together the body of your Union with profound strength.  He has no excuse, however feeble, for his prisons, for his corruption of Federal Office with unqualified seekers.  Mr. Obama will close the prison at Cuba, will respect the many Rights of Man.  Mr. McCain now preens before those who would reject the natural Right to trials, and also those who would establish theirs as the one true religion.  He is in these things not sensible, not a true man of Liberty.

Abigail had asked me to say a word for your Senator Clinton, but as with John Quincy I think it best to let them say in their own voice what they will; for my speech is far too pedestrian, too coarse, too unrefined to convey that which rises in their hearts, and for that reason I bid them to present their thoughts to you on another day.  As I feel my bond to your Inter-Net nearing its present expiration, I dare ask you only one favor for a concerned patriot.  If you could affix one of your Obama Bumper Stickers to some pole or fixture within the grounds where my old bones sleep, I should mark myself proud.  So to curb the twin dangers of Faction, to permit war only when war must come, and for Liberty herself, please cast your vote for Senator Obama, and think kindly if you can of this old patriot, who has only pride in you.

Yours with utmost sincerity,

President John Adams