Susan Eisenhower, a lifelong Republican and granddaughter of Dwight Eisenhower, has endorsed Obama as the best leader to pursue bipartisan cooperation and address the serious issues facing the nation.

Forty-seven years ago, my grandfather Dwight D. Eisenhower bid farewell to a nation he had served for more than five decades. In his televised address, Ike famously coined the term "military-industrial complex," and he offered advice that is still relevant today. "As we peer into society’s future," he said, we "must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow…"

..Deep in America’s heart, I believe, is the nagging fear that our best years as a nation may be over. We are disliked overseas and feel insecure at home. We watch as our federal budget hemorrhages red ink and our civil liberties are eroded. Crises in energy, health care and education threaten our way of life and our ability to compete internationally. There are also the issues of a costly, unpopular war; a long-neglected infrastructure; and an aging and increasingly needy population.

I am not alone in worrying that my generation will fail to do what my grandfather’s did so well: Leave America a better, stronger place than the one it found.

Given the magnitude of these issues and the cost of addressing them, our next president must be able to bring about a sense of national unity and change. As we no longer have the financial resources to address all these problems comprehensively and simultaneously, setting priorities will be essential. With hard work, much can be done.

The biggest barrier to rolling up our sleeves and preparing for a better future is our own apathy, fear or immobility. We have been living in a zero-sum political environment where all heads have been lowered to avert being lopped off by angry, noisy extremists. I am convinced that Barack Obama is the one presidential candidate today who can encourage ordinary Americans to stand straight again; he is a man who can salve our national wounds and both inspire and pursue genuine bipartisan cooperation. Just as important, Obama can assure the world and Americans that this great nation’s impulses are still free, open, fair and broad-minded…

The last time the United States had an open election was 1952. My grandfather was pursued by both political parties and eventually became the Republican nominee. Despite being a charismatic war hero, he did not have an easy ride to the nomination. He went on to win the presidency — with the indispensable help of a "Democrats for Eisenhower" movement. These crossover voters were attracted by his pledge to bring change to Washington and by the prospect that he would unify the nation.

It is in this great tradition of crossover voters that I support Barack Obama’s candidacy for president. If the Democratic Party chooses Obama as its candidate, this lifelong Republican will work to get him elected and encourage him to seek strategic solutions to meet America’s greatest challenges. To be successful, our president will need bipartisan help.

At first, when I heard that Google missed their expected quarterly earnings by a couple of cents, I thought this a refreshing breath of honest accounting.

Many successful companies routinely beat expected earnings by a penny, but only through accounting tricks that artificially smooth out their results.  It wouldn’t be surprising with a slowing economy that an advertising based business might take a hit.  Google’s explanations for why they missed their quarter surprised me, however.

The problem, said Google, was that their experiments with existing social advertising systems didn’t work out well: 

"We have found that social-networking inventory is not monetizing as well as expected," he said.

Under further questioning, co-founder Sergey Brin said the company was disappointed in experiments it had run on some of the approximately 20 social networks it works with, which include MySpace and its own Orkut.

I don’t think we have the killer best way to advertise and monetize social networks yet," Brin said. "It’s a big opportunity because it’s so much inventory."

I’m not saying that Google didn’t actually miss their quarter, but their explanation of why they missed seems to be heavily spun to work to their strategic advantage. 

It casts doubt on the viability of Google’s competitors in social networking and advertising even as Google readies it own offerings.

Notice that Brin says we don’t have the killer way to advertise social networks yet. Google already has OpenSocial, surely Google’s social advertising platform can’t be far behind. 

There’s certainly a healthy dose of truth in what Google’s saying regarding the ineffectiveness of social advertising today.  But Google didn’t have to miss their quarter to figure that out.  It’s been widely reported that Facebook and Myspace advertising is relatively ineffective.  (My own experiences in a past job confirm that.)

Instead, Google seems to using their quarterly results as a powerful FUD message, casting doubt on the viability of Google’s social advertising competitors even as they prepare their own offerings.

Having thus set the stage, I won’t be at all surprised when Google announces in a future quarter that they beat earnings because they’ve cracked the code on social advertising.