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 Editorials | March 2008 
A Break From the Past American-Style
 Jean-Marcel Bouguereau - Le Nouvel Observateur
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Never has an American presidential election awoken as much interest in the United States and the rest of the world. And only rarely have the Democratic primaries delivered as much suspense. We could have believed that it was all settled, but Hillary Clinton has just recovered her luster after a discouraging moment. In what ever more resembles a race against the clock, with its close calls and head-to-head sprints, Hillary Clinton has recovered speed, even though she remains mathematically behind Obama.
Moreover, the suspense could last right to the end, if neither candidate succeeds in outstripping the other between now and the Democratic convention. In that case, the final decision will belong to 796 super-delegates, important Democratic Party personalities. Unless, as Hillary has proposed, an Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama ticket were possible.
Another reason for this election's fascination: the designated Republican Party candidate, John McCain, is an outsider, a man hated by his own party's rightwing, by fundamentalists notably because he had the courage to denounce recourse to torture.
According to the newsweekly New Republic, during George Bush's term, "McCain was the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington. In health care, McCain co-sponsored, with John Edwards and Ted Kennedy, a patients' bill of rights. He joined Chuck Schumer to sponsor one bill allowing the re-importation of prescription drugs and another permitting wider sale of generic alternatives."
This strange configuration, a courageous outsider on the Republican side and two good Democratic candidates, provides hope that George Bush's two calamitous terms could be followed by the United States' international renaissance. America's image is at its lowest point. In December 2007, a poll showed that the United States remains eminently unpopular.
When asked what country or "entity" represented the greatest threat to world stability, Canadians, Italian, Turks, and Chinese did not answer bin Laden, but the United States! So Washington would be more dangerous than the "Axis of Evil" countries? Not unequivocally, since Americans themselves share that opinion. Now, in the present, particularly anxiety-producing state of the globe, the world, like the USA, is more concerned than ever about stability. That's the break from the past these three candidates - each so very different from the other - promise.
Jean-Marcel Bouguereau is editor-in-chief of the "Nouvel Observateur." He is also an editorialist at the "Republique des Pyrenees," for which this article was written. |
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