For political junkies, especially those addicted to American politics, it's been a fascinating couple of weeks. Wall-to-wall television coverage has allowed us to witness the historic national convention of the Democratic Party in so-called Mile-High City of Denver last week. It was a masterpiece of orchestration, starting with the quiet, low-key first night with the feature speech by Michelle Obama, through addresses by the runner-up candidate, Hillary Clinton, to her husband, former President Bill and the chosen running-mate, Joe Biden, climaxing with Barack Obama's eloquent address to 80,000 supporters gathered in a football stadium and the biggest television audience ever to witness a political convention.

You couldn't demand better political theatre, which fed off the negative coverage by the news media over what the Clinton camp would do in their unhappiness over their candidate's failure to break through. What the scribblers and pomaded talking heads failed to grasp is that this was a convention of politicians, who understand the maxim that politics is about the art of the possible. What else could they do but come together and back the candidate who had clearly won the day by playing the game the way it had evolved over generations?

This week, it was the turn of the Republicans. The day after Obama emulated Michael Manley's speech-making prowess, his opponent, John McCain, turned 72, making him the oldest person to be nominated as a first-term presidential candidate. It was also the day his campaign shot itself in the foot.

There had been considerable speculation about whom he would pick as his running-mate. One object of this focus was Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts and who dropped out early in the primary process. Another was Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania and one-time head of Homeland Security. Apparently, McCain really liked Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic senator from Connecticut whom Al Gore had picked to run with him against George Bush II eight years ago. The trouble with these men is that they are unpopular among the conservative fundamental Christian constituency who make up the core of the party's supporters.

So whom did McCain choose? Sarah Palin, governor of the sparsely populated state of Alaska and little known in the rest of the country. The 44-year-old hardliner is a champion of gun rights, an ardent Christian who believes creationism should be taught in schools but who doesn't support sex education. Oh, and her political career consists of being mayor of a town of fewer than 7000 people and who has occupied the state mansion for less than two years.

In the elongated, gruelling primary process, McCain made much of Obama's so-called lack of experience and judgement, but with the announcement last week Friday totally negated any legitimacy that criticism may have held. Now it's his own judgement which is in question, as a variety of items from Palin's past have popped up. The main question is just how carefully had McCain vetted his running-mate and just how well he could have summed up someone he had met only twice.

The Republican convention in St Paul, Minnesota, was a subdued affair in comparison with the exuberant blowout staged by the Democrats last week. Hurricane Gustav put a damper on things early in the week, but saved the party some grief by forcing George Bush and his Rasputinesque vice-president, Dick Cheney, to stay in Washington, with Bush making a short, eight-minute address by television hook-up from the White House on Tuesday evening.

But the problem the party has - demonstrated in the tone of the speeches - is that by complaining about poor economic conditions, interest rates, job losses, and mismanagement in Washington, they are grumbling about the record of their own party's man who has run things for eight years. So they spent considerable time and effort to play up McCain's personal story from his days as a navy pilot shot down over North Vietnam and held under dire conditions - including torture - for six years. They also made much of his reputation as a maverick (but who has voted with Bush 90 per cent of the time), and left out the fact that he is known for his temper tantrums and penchant for rash decisions.

In the past eight years, George the Second has strewn the political landscape with the flotsam and jetsam of his incompetence and ideologically driven policies. From the day he took office, he wanted to attack Saddam Hussein's Iraq because "he tried to kill muh daddy". That ludicrous decision has lost the US nearly all the goodwill and support it had attracted when it attacked Afghanistan after 9/11.

When he took office Bush inherited a budget surplus which he quickly turned into an enormous deficit, then added insult to injury by awarding the richest segment of the population generous tax cuts and ratcheting up the national debt to astronomical proportions. Under the Republican aversion to government doing anything meaningful, he gutted the once highly respected Federal Emergency Management Agency (a much richer and bigger version of ODPEM), leaving the major city of New Orleans in shambles after a powerful hurricane struck it three years ago. Millions of Americans are in danger of losing their homes because of the collapse of the sub-prime market. More Americans than the population of the entire Caribbean are without health insurance, and incomes have been frozen or have actually contracted in this president's term.

With those factors in play, the election in eight weeks time should be what basketball players call a "slam-dunk" for Barack Obama. So why are only a few meagre points separating him from McCain in this campaign? The answer is simply that, regardless of the real and considerable progress the United States has made towards a multiracial and multicultural society, racism remains a significant factor.

If Barack Obama were a white man, even without changing his name, he'd be way ahead at this point in the race.

keeble.mack@sympatico.ca

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