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White House race is turning into a real classic

— PHOTO: AP

Mike Huckabee … unexpected star.

Nineteen sixty-eight was a vintage year, as was 1992. And, I confidently predict, 2008 will be one too. I am not speaking of fine bottles of Chateau Lafite but rather American presidential politics.

The campaign that will culminate on November 4 is already shaping up as a classic, replete with the requisite elements of a cracking contest: a gaggle of intriguing candidates with complicated histories, volatility in the electorate, and an unpredicta ble result. And up for grabs is the leadership of the world’s sole superpower. The stakes could not be higher — for Americans and for everyone else.

The battle for 2008 was always going to be open, with no incumbent on either side. But there was a time when the two parties’ choices seemed easy to guess: an aura of inevitability wreathed itself around Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani. That would have been a slugfest to savour, a New York derby pitting two scarred bruisers with a talent for doling out and absorbing punishment. Now both those frontrunners, while still narrowly ahead in polls, are stumbling, watching the momentum flow towards their rivals — especially in make-or-break Iowa and New Hampshire, which vote next month. As Barack Obama surges among Democrats in Iowa, it is becoming possible to imagine 2008 as the first United States election since 1976 without either a Clinton or a Bush. Suddenly, nothing is predictable.

Already some weirdnesses are clear. The two candidates who polls rate as the most electable for their respective parties are lagging behind. Surveys show John Edwards beating every Republican on offer, yet Democrats rank him behind Ms Clinton and Mr. Obama. John McCain is the only Republican who polls ahead of the three leading Democrats in a match-up, yet he is stuck in fourth place.

Stranger still, the main candidates are deeply flawed. Mr. Obama is young and inexperienced; Mr. Edwards, with his $400 haircuts, has an authenticity problem; Ms Clinton is seen as establishment and robotic.

Among the Republicans, Mr. McCain, at 70, is old and an advocate of an unpopular war in Iraq. Mr. Giuliani’s liberal stance on guns, gays, and abortion — and a Technicolor personal life that has seen him defending the taxpayer-funded security detail that protected his lover when he was the married mayor of New York — have alienated him from the family-values voters who can decide Republican contests in the States of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Mitt Romney has the big hair and dazzling smile of a Hollywood president. Trouble is, he is a Mormon seeking the votes of evangelicals who refuse to recognise him as a Christian. TV actor and former Senator Fred Thompson is such a lethargic campaigner, he is in single digits.

Which leaves Mike Huckabee, the new and entirely unexpected star of the 2008 campaign. His warm, folksy fluency has drawn comparisons with Bill Clinton: like Mr. Clinton, he was born in a town called Hope and served as a popular Arkansas Governor. Unlike Mr. Clinton, he is a Baptist preacher who does not believe in evolution and suggested in 1992 that people living with AIDS should be quarantined.

He is so clueless on foreign affairs, he had not even heard of last week’s U.S. intelligence report on Iran’s non-bomb — 24 hours after it had been on every TV news bulletin and front page. He may well win in Iowa on January 3 and he is currently tied with Mr. Giuliani in national polls of Republicans.

Against that Republican crop is a Democratic trio with just a few years in the Senate between them and the not-quite-experience of eight years as First Lady. As one Republican commentator puts it: “What happens if both parties nominate a candidate who can’t win?”

All this is great fun as spectator sport. But for those watching, especially those in governing circles in other countries, there are some important lessons to learn too. The first is that wit and warmth matter enormously in today’s politics. Mr. Huckabee’s rise can be explained almost entirely by his easy manner. Both he and Mr. Obama deploy a weapon that could protect others under fire if only they could acquire it: humour.

More importantly, the contest offers heartening evidence that a more progressive mood may be dawning in the U.S. Start in the most obvious place, among the Democrats. It is worth spelling out what would once have been unimaginable: the two lead contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are a black man and a white woman. The notion of either a black or woman President was once the stuff of fanciful “what if” movies. Now it is a real possibility (though I cannot quite shake off the thought that, when the smoke clears, the resilient Mr. Edwards, the white man in the trio, may be the one left standing).

The Obama campaign has been electrified by Oprah Winfrey’s appearance at a clutch of rallies last weekend, bringing out (mainly white) Iowans and New Hampshire voters in numbers to rival a Led Zeppelin reunion.

The response has confirmed Ms Winfrey’s unique standing as a moral authority in America, a position secured by her early voicing of outrage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But there is a plainer meaning too. According to one Washington Post columnist on Tuesday, when white Americans are cheering themselves hoarse for two African-Americans, “something big [is] happening.”

It is not only about race. Mr. Obama’s stance against the Iraq war has forced Ms Clinton to tack Left. Mr. Edwards dares to talk about poverty and inequality with a directness the Prime Minister in the United Kingdom is yet to match. He has also challenged the trade agreements whose chief beneficiaries have been the balance sheets of multinational corporations. All three compete over how many people would be covered by their healthcare reform plans.

Perhaps that is no surprise in a Democratic contest that inevitably panders to the Left leanings of primary voters. But just watch what is going on among the Republicans. Admittedly, there is a vicious contest under way to strike the cruellest posture towards illegal immigrants (a development that could alienate Latino voters, hurting Republicans in key western States next November). And it is sad that both Mr. Romney and Mr. Giuliani, who might have offered themselves as a new breed of enlightened Republicans, have instead disavowed their earlier, more liberal records.

Nevertheless, go online and watch last month’s CNN/YouTube debate, which featured Mr. McCain slamming Mr. Romney for refusing to rule out “waterboarding” of terror suspects, and denouncing torture as a violation of the Geneva conventions.

The same debate had Congressman Ron Paul — trailing in the polls, yet bagging serious campaign contributions online — railing not only against the Iraq war but the entire drift of U.S. imperialistic foreign policy, planting its bases all over the world: “I don’t want to send troops overseas using force to tell [other people] how to live. We would object to it here and they’re going to object to us over there.” Meanwhile, Mr. Huckabee calls climate change a “moral issue” that entails “a biblical duty” to save the planet.

What to make of this noisy, confusing circus? We might not be on the brink of a progressive moment in U.S. politics. But we could be witnessing the end of the Bush era — in which the war on terror overshadowed all else — to be replaced by one that focusses on other questions, which transcend the old partisan dividing lines. How it will play out is anyone’s guess. But all those who care about the direction of our world over the next four years had better pay attention. — ©Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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