Julie Nixon Eisenhower – who backed Bush in 2004 –  is for Obama. 

·        Read the story here.

And Susan Eisenhower – Ike’s granddaughter and lifelong Republican – is for Obama. 

I met her last week in Jacksonville at an Obama fundraiser organized in large part by a seriously wealthy Republican businessman who voted for Bush . . . twice . . . but is now persuading his Republican friends to support Obama.

·        As Ms. Eisenhower wrote in the Washington Post this past winter: 

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. . . .

. . . 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.

Given Obama's support among young people, I believe that he will be most invested in defending the interests of these rising generations and, therefore, the long-term interests of this nation as a whole.  Without his leadership, our children and grandchildren are at risk of growing older in a marginalized country that is left to its anger and divisions.  Such an outcome would be an unacceptable legacy for any great nation.

Susan Eisenhower, a business consultant, is the author of four books, most recently "Partners in Space: US-Russian Cooperation After the Cold War."

F I’ve been making the case that your Republican friends only think they’re Republican. 

The whole political landscape, I argue, has shifted so far right that they are now moderate Democrats.  The Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin allowed me to make that case here.

Yes, the hard right – the Karl Roves and the James Dobsons and the Rush Limbaughs – will do their best to destroy Obama and make him out to be something he’s not.  But if the liberals and the moderates and the Eisenhower Republicans – and even some 2004 Bush Republicans like the ones I met in Jacksonville – come out and vote November 4, the country could be reborn.