Oops!

On Friday, the Chicago Tribune announced that it was endorsing Barack Obama for president. Now, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about a newspaper endorsing a particular candidate for high office. Indeed, I’m confident that there are very few people out there who are saying to themselves: “I’m so conflicted, I just wish my local newspaper would tell me who I should vote for.” The Tribune‘s announcement, however, had more of a “man-bites-dog” quality to it than most newspaper endorsements, as it marked the first time in the paper’s 161-year history that the Trib had given its nod to a Democratic presidential candidate. Joseph Medill, the influential editor during the newspaper’s formative years, was one of the co-founders of the Republican Party, and the Tribune was an early supporter of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 campaign for the White House (after briefly considering giving its nod to John McCain), so the paper’s endorsement of Obama marked something of a seismic shift in the tectonic plate of midwestern politics. That whirring noise you heard on Friday was the sound of Col. Robert McCormick furiously spinning in his grave.

Apart from its purely historic character, there are two reasons why this endorsement carries some special significance.