LOS ANGELES -- The Los Angeles Times endorsed the presidential bids of Barack Obama and John McCain on Friday.

The newspaper said either of the candidates remaining in the Democratic field -- Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton -- would be a formidable nominee in the November election. But it "strongly" endorsed Obama after praising him as an inspiring leader "most focused on steering the nation toward constructive change."

"Just because the ballot features two strong candidates does not mean that it is difficult to choose between them," the Times said.

The nation's fourth-largest paper was particularly critical of the New York senator for her Senate vote on Iraq, saying she "faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war." Obama, by comparison, "saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right."

Clinton's election "would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons," the paper concluded. "Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page."

In the Republican race, the paper said it parted company with McCain on various issues -- he opposes abortion rights, rejects the right of gays and lesbians to marry, and advocates fighting on in Iraq. But the paper credited the Arizona senator's "fundamental individualism, spanning his distrust of big government, his support for immigration reform and his insistence on a sound American foreign policy."

"We do not support his determination to fight on in Iraq, but we welcome his insistence that America's military posture be matched by its moral purpose," the paper wrote.

The newspaper called Mitt Romney "a vigorous and articulate alternative" but said he "spent so much effort to convince Republicans he's one of them that he has called his most basic values into question."

The endorsements for the Feb. 5 primary will appear in Sunday editions. They were posted Friday on the newspaper's Web site.