Six years ago, this newspaper endorsed John E. Sununu for U.S. Senate, writing, "John E. Sununu has stood out as one of the country's brightest and most innovative House members. If New Hampshire voters elect him to the U.S. Senate this Tuesday, he will become a national leader in the new generation shaping America's future." Sen. Sununu has proven that assessment correct, and today we happily endorse him again.

In 2005, President Bush and the Republican Congress were at the height of their post-9/11 power. They pushed a flurry of horrible bills that led directly to the massive GOP defeat in 2006. Three bills that year that came to symbolize the party's eventual demise: the gargantuan Medicare prescription drug benefit, the transportation bill that contained 6,371 earmarks, including the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," and the administration's pork-and subsidy-filled energy bill opposed by virtually every public interest group from Public Citizen on the left to the Heritage Foundation on the right.

When the White House pushed the Patriot Act, Sununu held out for the inclusion of civil rights provisions even though he stood virtually alone in his own party.

What about the most pressing issues of this election? All the way back in 2003, his first year in the Senate, Sununu sponsored legislation to boost federal oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, urging reforms that might have prevented the current home mortgage meltdown. He also has spent years advocating for better oversight of insurance companies such as AIG, which taxpayers bailed out this month. And he was for both increased domestic oil drilling and more investment in alternative energy sources before gasoline hit $4 a gallon.

Had Washington followed Sununu's lead, we would not be in the mess we are in today. In this time of great economic turmoil, it would be a huge mistake for New Hampshire to throw out one of the few senators in Washington who gets what is going on in the markets and has a record of promoting the exact reforms we now need.

In John E. Sununu, New Hampshire has a truly independent, principled, fiscally conservative and reform-minded senator. In Washington, that is the rarest of all things. Let's make sure we send him back there so he can continue being a voice of reason and conscience in a governing body desperately in need of both.