Shocked? You shouldn’t be. The Washington Post has been a reliabe left-leaning paper for as I far back as I can recall, just today running a story about a non-scandal in which it alleged that John McCain abused his office. Let’s analyze the endorsement, shall we?

The choice is made easy in part by Mr. McCain’s disappointing campaign, above all his irresponsible selection of a running mate who is not ready to be president.

Alright. So their line of logic is that an inexperienced politician isn’t suited for the office of the Vice Presidency, so they’ll endorse an inexperienced politician for the office of the Presidency itself. What am I missing here?

Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building.

Senator Obama asserted that presidents serve 8 to 10 years, that America liberated Auschwitz, that he’s visited 57 states over his campaign, and promised to meet with the president of Canada. He’s one of the most polarizing figures in Congress, rated the most liberal member of the United States Senate.

Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president.

And he has the same exact potential to become Jimmy Carter. He seeks to raise capital gains taxes and his own top advisors can’t explain the details of his tax plans. He’s not off to a good start.

Start with two ongoing wars, both far from being won; an unstable, nuclear-armed Pakistan; a resurgent Russia menacing its neighbors; a terrorist-supporting Iran racing toward nuclear status; a roiling Middle East; a rising China seeking its place in the world. Stir in the threat of nuclear or biological terrorism, the burdens of global poverty and disease, and accelerating climate change. Domestically, wages have stagnated while public education is failing a generation of urban, mostly minority children. Now add the possibility of the deepest economic trough since the Great Depression.

So let’s put in a man that wants to cut funding for a missile defense system, has opposed free trade agreements, wants to unconditionally negotiate with the terrorist-supporting Iran, opposes the successful school voucher program, pays his own female staffers 83 cents for every dollar he pays his male staffers, and wants to raise taxes in this time of economic hardship.

Not even his fiercest critics would blame President Bush for all of these problems, and we are far from being his fiercest critic.

WaPo hasn’t been paying attention. You want to get into his “fiercest critics”? There are liberals who have (quite literally) blamed Bush for the failure of their marriages. Bush has been blamed for so many problems that a phrase has been coined by the right: Blame Bush.

A McCain presidency would not equal four more years, but outside of his inner circle, Mr. McCain would draw on many of the same policymakers who have brought us to our current state.

Do they say this with a straight face? One of Obama’s economic advisors, as reported by WaPo, is Franklin Raines — the chairman who helped drive Fannie Mae into the ground. His original VP search committee chair was Jim Johnson — another former Fannie chair who helped drive it into the ground.

Mr. Obama’s economic plan contains its share of unaffordable promises, but it pushes more in the direction of fairness and fiscal health.

Are we surprised they’re endorsing him? Fairness? The “spread the wealth” borderline-socialist remark probably helped strengthen their decision.

Though he has been less definitive than we would like, he supports accountability measures for public schools and providing parents choices by means of charter schools.

You want to talk about parental choice? How about school vouchers, which have already proven effective in urban areas such as the District of Columbia? Obama opposes them. McCain, on the other hand, supports them.

The next president is apt to have the chance to nominate one or more Supreme Court justices. Given the court’s current precarious balance, we think Obama appointees could have a positive impact on issues from detention policy and executive power to privacy protections and civil rights.

Translation: It’d be nice if we could maintain activist judges on the SCOTUS.

When he might have been scoring political points against the incumbent, he instead responsibly urged fellow Democrats in Congress to back Mr. Bush’s financial rescue plan.

He was scoring plenty of political points. He placed the blame squarely on the GOP for a crisis it attempted to prevent years earlier.

He, too, is committed to maintaining U.S. leadership and sticking up for democratic values, as his recent defense of tiny Georgia makes clear.

I hope they’re kidding. It took Obama several statements in order to issue a support of Georgia as strong as McCain gave. He originally just urged restraint on both sides. WaPo’s kidding itself.

And so we bring ourselves to what Obama considers the most important judgment call in recent history: The war in Iraq. What does WaPo have to offer?

Mr. Obama’s greatest deviation from current policy is also our biggest worry: his insistence on withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a fixed timeline. Thanks to the surge that Mr. Obama opposed, it may be feasible to withdraw many troops during his first two years in office. But if it isn’t — and U.S. generals have warned that the hard-won gains of the past 18 months could be lost by a precipitous withdrawal — we can only hope and assume that Mr. Obama would recognize the strategic importance of success in Iraq and adjust his plans.

So Obama was wrong, by WaPo’s own admission, on one of the biggest judgment calls in modern history. So let’s make him Commander-In-Chief.

And we find no way to square his professed passion for America’s national security with his choice of a running mate who, no matter what her other strengths, is not prepared to be commander in chief.

This comes right after they say Obama’s wrong on Iraq and they hope he’s willing to alter his position. How is Sarah Palin any less experienced than the man they want as Commander-In-Chief? The very next words appearing in the article?

ANY PRESIDENTIAL vote is a gamble, and Mr. Obama’s résumé is undoubtedly thin.

Time after time in the article, WaPo expresses the hope that Obama will alter one policy or another in one way or another. They say that Obama’s judgment on how to fix Iraq was wrong and that they hope he’s willing to change his plans. They say he has an “undoubtedly thin” resume. Then they endorse him. Remarkable.