There should be no surprise that the 2008 presidential race is going down to the wire.

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, recently said that Americans have “good and sufficient” reasons to admire John McCain, the Republican nominee.

Clinton, though he is supporting Democratic candidate Barack Obama, added that McCain, Arizona senator and former prisoner of war in Vietnam “has given something in life the rest of us can’t match.”

Meanwhile, Obama, a senator from Illinois and the first black man with a legitimate opportunity to be president, has earned the endorsement of Colin Powell, Republican and retired general who was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state.

“I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change and that’s why I’m supporting Barack Obama, not out of any lack of respect or admiration for Sen. John McCain.”

The years of the Bush presidency have been a trying period for America. The nation has gone from running a surplus to going deeply in debt. Terrorists attacked on our soil, and the country is involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — the latter conflict costing more than 4,000 American lives and about $10 billion a month in a country with a huge budget surplus. Now the country is facing economic crises on several fronts.

Voters have a tough decision to make.

Obama’s reaction to what middle-class Americans are facing has led the Times West Virginian — by a 3-2 vote of the editorial board — to endorse him for the nation’s highest office.

We have no doubt that McCain, like Obama, sincerely wants the best for a country that he has served virtually his entire adult life. However, his reaction to the ongoing economic crisis has been shaky at best.

As recently as September, he was insisting that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. Then, as he slipped behind Obama in most polls, McCain’s campaign attempted to shift focus away from the issue foremost on voters’ minds.

“It’s a dangerous road, but we have no choice,” a campaign strategist told the New York Daily News. “If we keep talking about the economic crisis we’re going to lose.”

Obama has proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and tax cuts for most other households. He would end the Bush administration’s tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year. He also would impose a new Social Security payroll tax on incomes above $250,000 a year. Currently, all annual income up to $102,000 is taxed at 12.4 percent for Social Security, with employers and workers splitting the cost evenly.

He stressed that the higher tax rates would not be

but go back to those of the Clinton era, when the country was much more prosperous economically.

McCain, on the other hand, wants to extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, including those for wealthier Americans.

Interestingly, McCain opposed Bush’s tax cuts early this decade because they were not accompanied by spending cuts and because they went “to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans.”

According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the middle 20 percent, those making $37,000 to $66,000 annually, the savings would be $1,100 under Obama’s plan and $325 under McCain’s. For the lowest 20 percent, those making less than $19,000, the numbers are $570 for the Obama plan and $21 under McCain’s.

The McCain campaign, unfairly in our view, has accused Obama of favoring socialistic tax redistribution policies and turning the IRS “into a giant welfare agency.” If giving those at the top of the economic scale a break is not socialism and welfare for the wealthy, neither is shifting policy to aid the middle class.

Both sides acknowledge the country needs a change in direction. McCain, though, carries the weight of admitting that he has voted with Bush 90 percent of the time.

Obama, a relative newcomer to national politics, has stood up well during the marathon campaign for the presidency. He deserves the opportunity to lead our country in a new and better direction.