Our nation needs a leader we can believe in. Barack Obama is that leader.

The Illinois senator's political trajectory has been spectacular; so spectacular that his veteran opponents — first for the Democratic nomination, now for the presidency of the United States — have tried, without success, to campaign against his freshness to the political scene.

But as Obama showed once again during the first debate, he's a statesman: gracious, decisive, perceptive and quick-minded. He has a head for issues international and domestic, and he confronts them with knowledge that could wonderfully serve his fellow citizens of today and tomorrow.

Neither he nor John McCain alone can overcome the many challenges facing our next president — but already he has surrounded himself with people we can trust to help him right today's dangerously tossed ship of state.

To correct our government's course, he'll need strong support from Congress — more about that in days to come — but this is someone who, in just four years, has shown his persuasive abilities with Capitol Hill's hidebound establishment.

At least as important is that we can also trust him to restore the credibility of our judiciary as vacancies occur at district and appellate levels, as well as at the Supreme Court. Civil liberties in particular, and justice in general, have suffered enormously in recent years.

Owing to the eight-year orgy of excesses by the White House, Obama has the advantage of running not just against the Arizona senator, but also against the man McCain might have beaten eight years ago in a fair fight: In George W. Bush, McCain campaigns with an albatross 'round his neck. For having allied himself so closely with a corrupt and inept administration, McCain is in the unenviable position of a Herbert Hoover, his Harding and Coolidge being Bush and Cheney.

He has flailed mightily in his effort to grasp the mantle of change — but it belongs to Obama, whose early courage in calling for something like a New Deal in the face of a status-quo political culture is paying what appear to be dividends of the highest order.

His is an American story for our times: Raised in often-rough times as one of a fast-rising racial minority, Obama — on sheer merit and hard work — led his class at Harvard Law. That's a ticket to great wealth — but he forsook it for a career organizing the poor communities in the bleakest parts of Chicago. Where law was part of that career, it lay in teaching.

As an Illinois legislator and as a U.S. senator, he honed his persuasive skills and oratorical abilities — and has become the voice of hope and idealism that has gone largely muffled for four decades and more.

Yet pragmatism played a role in winning the nomination — and our nation will need plenty of that in the years to come.

New Mexico is being called a swing state in this election: Its five electoral votes are a drop in the bucket of 270 needed to win, but for all we know, the election might be that close. Four years ago, our state's voters somehow saw four more years of Bush/Cheney as preferable to a presidency responsive to working Americans. We and the rest of the country are paying the price — economically and spiritually.

When Obama late last month urged Northern New Mexicans to make their predominantly Democratic voter-registration count, it was an eloquent call for a strong turnout.

This week, early voting begins in our state. You have a chance to make a difference in the direction our country goes. We urge a vote for Barack Obama.