The Powell endorsement

This morning on "Meet The Press" Former Secretary of State under George Bush, Colin Powell, endorsed Barack Obama for president saying he would vote, but not campaign for him.
Even though the public doesn't usually pay too much attention to endorsements like this in terms of affecting their decision to vote, what this will do for Obama is likely dominate the media coverage going into next week, with pundits and surrogates going back and forth on what the endorsement means. This is a bad time for McCain to be losing news cycles, and last week the coverage of the hostility of his supporters at his rallies to Obama and his inability to produce a "game-changer" during the debate is what most people were talking about, further producing forward momentum for Obama.
After last week McCain needed something desperately to turn around his chances, or at least create some tightening in the polls, especially as the Republican attacks get more and more negative in the hope to produce something that will stick in the American People's minds.
Powell's endorsement this morning was less about Obama in terms of readiness to lead or simple experience, but seemed more to be about character, judgment and demeanor, the same qualities that have gotten Obama to this point in his political career. And although Powell didn't say anything negative about McCain himself, the heartfelt stories that Powell told, such as the muslim soldier who died in Iraq and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, to his very vocal abhorrence to the tactics being used by the GOP, as well as what he called the party's "narrowing" over the past 8 years, created a kind of zeitgeist feel to it, as most of what he said seems to be the conventional wisdom right now as to why 2008 will most likely be a huge realigning election, swinging the political pendulum to the left.