democracy

On paper, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal would appear to be the perfect candidate to help shepherd the Republican Party out of its post-election mire. A Rhodes scholar of Indian descent, who became the youngest governor in the country upon assuming office in 2007 at the age of 36, Jindal possesses the intellect, youth, and philosophical outlook to both satisfy the whims of the party's base and court the interest of young and non-white voters--demographic groups which the GOP has been haemorrhaging to the Democrats in recent election cycles.

As such, it should come as no real surprise that the Republican leadership saw it fit to hand Jindal the fillip of presenting the party's official televised rebuttal to President Barack Obama's first speech to Congress: a perfect opportunity to introduce himself to a national audience, articulate a distinct vision for America's present and future, and lay the foundations for an already-mooted presidential run in less than four years' time.

However, if Tuesday's address truly was the first litmus test of a potential Jindal candidacy, then perhaps he would be better off sticking to his pledge (made on last week's edition of 'Meet the Press') to focus solely on getting re-elected as governor in 2011.

Jindal's performance has drawn widespread criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike, and rightly so. With the country in the midst of a historically unprecedented economic implosion, and its citizens eagerly looking towards their democracy's political elders for both leadership and solace, the Louisiana governor comprehensively failed to substantively address the Presidential speech that preceded him, or perhaps more importantly discuss the topic of the economic crisis itself in a meaningful or engaging way.

Instead, the GOP's spokesman chose to deliver an oft-heard and well-trodden diatribe on why Republicans favoured a diminutive role for the state in government, punctuated with a catchphrase--"Americans can do anything"--which undoubtedly appeared rousing on paper but was sapped of any inspirational potency by Jindal's awkward, uneven and surprisingly unpolished delivery.

At a time when the vast majority of Americans now face uncertainty and trepidation on a daily basis due to the current economic crisis, those looking towards the Republican Party for leadership or solace on Tuesday night must have been sorely disappointed. The entire country has just experienced a two-year presidential race that was publicized and scrutinized to its last breath by the media--does the GOP really believe that there's anyone in the country in doubt as to what each party stands for? Do they think that voter confusion was the root of John McCain's defeat in the fall? Bipartisan governance is strongly desired by the electorate now more than ever--why shun the possibility of co-operation and return instead to the tired talking points of the last eight years at the very first opportunity?

While Jindal's performance was poor, the content of his message also deserves much criticism. Yes, there is need for stringent oversight on such a large and contrived spending package as the one in question to avoid a return to the pork-barrel politics that has become synonymous with Washington, unquestionably. However, if the Republican Party want to follow Barack Obama's lead and turn this theme into a communications strategy that really resonates with the American people, they first need to dilute down their obvious distaste for large, centralized government. There is an appetite across the developed world for an expanded fiscal role for government that only the most serious of crises can create: however inconvenient it may be, Republicans ignore this sentiment at their peril.

Governor Jindal's speech on Tuesday night did nothing to dispel the perception among liberals and conservatives alike that the Republican Party has become a party lacking in ideas. If anything, it should have sent alarm bells ringing within the party, and forced many who watched it to reconsider whether the comparisons frequently made between Jindal and President Obama are rooted more in superficiality than substance.

Last week, Carol Thatcher unwittingly illustrated how an archaic word from a different generation retains much of its racially-charged potency to this day - and rightly drew condemnation for it. This week, it was the turn of imagery to dredge up the unseemly spectre of the past.

A storm of publicity has gathered around the offices of the New York Post, after a cartoon published in Wednesday's edition of the newspaper - depicting the author of the recently-approved economic stimulus as a dead, crazed chimpanzee - was accused of being a not so subtle exercise in jingoism by both commentators in the media and civil rights activists.

Speaking to the media, Reverend Al Sharpton declared that "the cartoon in today's New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys."

"One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual reference to this when in the cartoon they have police saying after shooting a chimpanzee that ‘Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill,'" he added.

A press release was quickly issued by the newspaper, defending its cartoon as "a clear parody of a current news event" - the shooting dead by police of a chimpanzee in Connecticut on Monday after the creature mauled its owner's friend - and denouncing Rev. Sharpton for being "nothing more than a publicity opportunist."

However, with the furore over the cartoon refusing to abate, and a group of protestors converging on the newspaper's headquarters, the Post softened its stance in a Friday editorial, saying that "to those who were offended by the image, we apologise."

Whether simply a poorly executed sketch that was misconstrued - as the Guardian's USA blog rightly points out, the author of the stimulus package referenced in the cartoon would be the Democratic congressional leadership, not President Obama himself - or something more sinister, the controversy surrounding Sean Delonas's work highlights an interesting dilemma: the challenge now facing the professional satirists whose job it is to subvert the image of the first African-American president of the United States.

Distorting facial features as a means of highlighting the excesses and frailties of our public figures has been a staple of political satirists' trade in the western press since Thomas Nast's pioneering work during the Tammany Hall era, providing some iconic and enduring images: from the defiance of Winston Churchill's bulldoggish scowl to, more recently, Tony Blair's unnervingly large and perfectly-formed dentures and the increasingly simian features of George W Bush.

However, as highlighted recently in an article on the Huffington Post, cartoonists in the American press now find themselves in unchartered waters, as they try to tread an increasingly thin line between caricature and stereotype when penning their work: draw President Obama's lips too large, or his ears too big, and an artist may inadvertently face the same charges of racism and xenophobia levelled at the New York Post this week.

As CNN columnist Roland S. Martin succinctly put it: "What could be seen as silly humour if President George W Bush were in the White House has to be seen through the lens of America's racist past."

Tell Rall, president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, summed up the difficulty this paradigmatic moment in American history has invariably posed for his organisations' members, noting that, "without a doubt, people are stepping more gingerly. People are tiptoeing their way through this."

The alarm bells should have sounded for many during the general election. Seeking to poke fun at the right-wing media's continued chatter over Obama's "true" religious beliefs and purported affiliation with terrorist organisations, The New Yorker magazine placed on its front cover a depiction of Obama and his wife standing in the Oval Office: replete with turban, salwar kameez, camouflage pants and an AK-47 rifle. The cartoon, while playing on the issue of religion rather than race, was quickly rounded upon by critics who believed it reinforced popular misconceptions about the Democratic candidate - including his own campaign, which denounced it as "tasteless and offensive."

With more than 45 months left in President Obama's tenure, it seems inevitable this issue will arise again; particularly given that interest groups such as the NAACP are set to become even more vigilant in their monitoring of the media's output after this week's incident.

Consequently, political cartoonists now face the unenviable challenge of marrying outrageous and provocative iconography with political correctness: a damning restriction of free speech, which may, ironically, provoke a self-fulfilling creative backlash that results in the production of more vitriolic and jingoistic works.

As decorated American cartoonist Jules Feiffer noted, "outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." American political cartoonists are starting to get tetchy.

It appears that MSNBC may have finally made their much-anticipated decision as to who will succeed the late Tim Russert as the next host of Meet the Press: the most watched Sunday talk show in America and the longest-running television show in broadcast history. In an article posted Monday, The Huffington Post is reporting with some confidence that David Gregory has seen off stiff competition to land the coveted anchor role when Tom Brokaw's run as interim host wraps up in January.

While widely respected within the media world, and viewed by many as a rising star, the prospect of Gregory being handed the keys to arguably NBC's most prized broadcasting possession has actually appeared increasingly slim in recent months. Unable to carve out a slot for himself amongst MSNBC's stellar cast of polemicists, Gregory found himself saddled with Race for the White House in March of this year: a bland panel show covering the American presidential race that clearly lacked a creative direction and suffered from its tendency to recycle talking heads chosen largely from MSNBC's own in-house pool of talent. The decision to renew the show into the New Year--under the revised and equally uninspiring moniker 1600 Pennsylvania Drive--only cast further doubt as to whether Gregory would ultimately be handed an opportunity by the network to truly shine.

However, the decision to choose Gregory over flashier and more high profile candidates such as Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow is a huge vote of confidence for the Los Angeles native--and one that is justly deserved. Having engaged in a number of fiery exchanges with members of the Bush administration--the President himself included--while a member of the White House press corps, Gregory has quickly carved out a reputation for possessing excellent journalistic instincts, a rare ability to clearly identify "the story behind the story," and a tenacious and unrelenting style of interrogative pursuit: assets that would all mesh perfectly with the format of the highly decorated Sunday talk show.

Moreover, by choosing Gregory over Matthews and company--the pioneers of MSNBC's newfound strategy of jettisoning objectivity for opinion, which has seen the network mimic Fox News's rating success at the cost of drawing strong criticism during the presidential campaign season--MSNBC executives would ensure that the reputation of one of the few last great bastion's of balanced objectivity within the American third estate remains intact. Anyone who questions whether such an edifying description is truly merited need only look at Colin Powell's decision to announce his endorsement of Barack Obama's candidacy on the show a few weeks ago--and the almost country-wide outpouring of grief following Russert's death in June of this year

Following in our footsteps, a New York Times editorial today forcefully argues for the abolition of the electoral college in favour of the popular vote. There are numerous reasons to dispense with the creaking, archaic system: much of the initial rationale of the system lay in slavery; it is unconscionable that the presidency can be awarded to the candidate for whom fewer Americans vote (as happened in 2000); and the electoral college exaggerates the importance of votes in "swing states" like Ohio and Florida, while diminishing their significance in "safe states" like New York and Texas.

But most importantly, in my opinion, the system reduces the diverse political landscape of the country into monochrome blocks. It creates the crippling sense of a "red state" vs "blue state" divide. If a popular vote was in place, this perception would not have room to flourish. As the editorial points out, over 40% of voters in deep red Alabama cast their ballot for Obama, while 4.5 million Californians voted for McCain (equivalent to the number of votes the Republican got in Texas). If Obama is serious about transcending red-blue fissures, he should welcome the burgeoning national movement for the popular vote.

The tea leaves are ready, and the crystal balls are out. Now that the campaign is over, everyone's attention is focused on predicting what sort of president Barack Obama will be. The real answer is that it is too early to tell: the degree to which he moves the country to the left will be limited not by his plans but by what is politically feasible, and that will be revealed by events yet to come.

It is true that some of Obama's recent actions seem almost designed to test his left-wing base's patience. He has reportedly offered the position of secretary of state to Hillary Clinton, who he pilloried in the primaries as a symbol of nineties triangulation. Clinton was never popular with the party's left wing or 'netroots', and Ben Smith at Politico reports that they are reacting to her reemergence with some dismay.

Likewise, the possibility of Lawrence Summers becoming Treasury Secretary is generating anger among feminists; they reacted badly (and in my opinion unfairly) to a notorious remark he made mentioning the possibility of gender differences in aptitude and interest in science. Obama's tolerant attitude towards Joe Lieberman, which yesterday resulted in the Connecticut Senator earning only the mildest of punishments, has also irritated some on the left.

However, these actions tell us more about Obama's attitude to HR than about his governing agenda. Neither Clinton nor Summers would drag the administration notably towards the left; both show signs of having moved away from the centrist nineties. As for the Democrats' leniency towards Lieberman, I argued earlier this week that it was the smart political choice, and this consideration appears to have been what drove Obama's decision.

The significance of the transition period for an incoming presidential administration cannot be overstated: not only does it offer the opportunity for the President-elect to identify the priorities within his or her legislative and policy agenda for the forthcoming term, but it also represents the first true test of managerial acumen at the highest governmental level; just ask Bill Clinton, who endured a number of early and largely self-inflicted blows to his executive authority as a result of tardy mobilization and ill-judged selections for his supporting cast (cf. Zoe Baird).

As such, the actions of the Obama transition team in the coming weeks should not be observered merely for the sake of palace intrigue. Instead, like a candidate's general election campaign, transition offers a fleeting glimpse as to how well prepared a future Obama administration is to meet the challenges ahead, while at the same time acting as a rough indicator as to what the President-elect's advisers believe are the key issues that need to be addressed internally between now and January 20th 2009. Over the brief but fervent period of time that has elapsed since Obama's electoral victory, I would suggest that the following has rung true:

Senator Joe Lieberman has been a thorn in the Democrats' side for a long time, but relations have only worsened since Connecticut primary voters booted him off the party ticket in 2006. Lieberman reacted by separating himself from the party and running as an independent, despite his earlier promises not to do so. Having campaigned for him in the primaries, many of his Democratic colleagues switched their support to the official party nominee, much to Lieberman's chagrin. He won re-election anyway, and since then has repeatedly broken his campaign promise to be loyal to the Democrats, stumping for his old friend John McCain, smearing Barack Obama, and delivering the keynote address at the Republican convention.

It's no surprise, then, that the party base want revenge. There is already outrage at the gentle approach President-elect Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have taken thus far. However, they ought to remember the proverb about not cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. Kicking Lieberman out of the party might send a message that disloyalty will be punished, but other than that it would accomplish precious little. It would be far wiser for Democrats to send a forgiving and non-partisan message, and keep Lieberman on board for important Senate votes. There is currently a real prospect of their controlling a 60-seat majority in the Senate, which would let them stop Republican filibusters derailing their legislative goals. These are still goals that Lieberman shares, despite his alienation from the party. Here's hoping Democrats don't give him more reason to subvert these goals. Lieberman is the one who has been cutting off his nose to spite his face, and there is still a chance that he will come to see that.

Dennis highlights the success of California's Proposition 8, which amends the state constitution to ban gay marriage.  This was a bitter note in Tuesday's results, made all the more so by evidence that the surge in African-American turnout carried the proposition to victory. Gay rights activists clearly have a lot of work to do convincing socially conservative blacks, unless they plan on hoping that their high turnout was a passing aberration.

Other than continuing the slow process of convincing Americans of the rightness of their cause, or simply waiting for time to do its work as each new generation becomes more tolerant, these activists have a few options. Attorney Gloria Allred has already announced plans to challenge the constitutionality of the new constitutional amendment - unsurprisingly, this does not seem likely to succeed. Others are hoping to wait a few years and then introduce a new proposition to overturn this one - a prospect which suggests we may see decades of see-sawing court decisions and citizen initiatives.

In the meantime, what will happen to those same-sex couples who have already got married in California? Eugene Volokh has a good rundown of the possibilities. In brief, it appears quite possible that their marriages will be converted to domestic partnerships, either by the courts or by the legislature. Strangely enough, that would not provoke the ire of many who voted for Proposition 8 - a solid majority of Americans are comfortable with something very like gay marriage, so long as it is not called 'marriage'.

Despite the bad news in California, it is worth remembering that Connecticut and Massachusetts still have equal marriage rights, that New York recognises marriages in Massachusetts, and that President-elect Obama has promised to push for federal civil unions. Time remains the best ally supporters of gay marriage have on their side.

With almost all states called, we have a pretty good picture of the electoral map. It looks like this:

Though not quite the stuff of Democrats' wildest fantasies (which featured Georgia and even Montana), this is about as good as they could have hoped for. It is already being called a "landslide" by the often restrained New York Times. Nonetheless, it looks somewhat less impressive than this:

Or this:

However,  those sorts of landslides look to be things of the past. America is now much more evenly split, with both parties calibrating their message so as to win 51% of the electorate. The Democrats in particular have moved to the centre ever since Bill Clinton, scarred by the experience of the 1984 and 1988 elections depicted above, in which their candidates were widely seen as too liberal. Of course, some commentators, like John Judis of the New Republic, are already interpreting this election as part of a leftward shift in the nation. They may well be right, and I am sure we shall be discussing this at openUSA over the coming weeks. But there is no missing the fact that many of the new congressmen the Democrats have gained are more conservative than their old colleagues. This is the result of a deliberate and apparently highly successful strategy of recruiting candidates in tune with their districts. It will help keep the Democrats close to the centre, and perhaps even mark the return of a South in which both parties are competitive. Perhaps then we may see an electoral map which is more uniformly blue.

If the Presidential race provides insufficient drama tonight, watch out for the results of the Senate races also taking place. There look likely to be some real nail-biters. Foremost among these is the match-up in Georgia between incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss and Democrat Jim Martin. The race looks so close that it may end up in a December runoff, prolonging the election season yet further. Another close race is in Minnesota, with comedian Al Franken challenging Republican Senator Norm Coleman. This should have been a solid Democratic gain this year, but Franken has proved to be a less than ideal candidate, with the race essentially tied in the polls.

The outcome of these races should interest us all, even if we are not Minnesotans or Georgians. The workings of the Senate mean that a minority of over 40 can effectively stall any legislation, so the Democrats are desperately hoping they can reach 60 seats. It looks unlikely at the moment, but if this is truly a landslide for Obama, he may have sufficiently long coat-tails to get his party there. Amid all the excitement and triumphalism that would surround an Obama victory, we should not forget that he may have a difficult time bringing about the change he has promised.

Update: The Democrats have managed to win Elizabeth Dole's seat in North Carolina, a pleasing result for them...

The Huffington Post is carrying an intriguing story regarding a survey conducted exactly two years ago by polling company SurveyNow, gauging the balance of voter support across the country in the event of a hypothetical Barack Obama-John McCain presidential showdown in 2008.

Interviewing 600 voters in each state, SurveyUSA was able to extrapolate that an Obama candidacy would take Illinois, Hawaii and the District of Columbia-and that's it. This would have left him with a grand total of 28 total electoral votes, and culminated in a landslide victory for John McCain.

If Howard Wilson was right in his assertion that a week is a long time in politics, then this should prove ample evidence that two years is a very very long time indeed.

Given that the barriers of race and gender have been progressively eroded throughout the prolonged campaign season, many people have argued that this year's general election is something extraordinary by most measures.

For Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar, however, the 2008 election represents a potentially profound turning-point in American history.

As Richard Reeves reports, the New York Historical Society recently hosted a conference entitled "Do Elections Matter?" To kick-off the event, Amar put forth his thesis that the United States has experienced four "pivot point" elections in the 219 years since the founding fathers forged the country's constitution: 1800, 1860, 1932, and either 1968 or 1980.

In each case, Amar argued, socio-historical forces conspired to ensure that the outcome of each election shaped the direction of the country and the dynamics of its politics for generations to come.

For example, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson defeated Federalist John Adams in 1800, and over the next six decades the foundations for the Democratic Party in its current form began to emerge; Abraham Lincoln's victory in 1860 marked the beginning of Republican dominance well into the next century; FDR and the socialist New Deal Democrats set the agenda for much of the post-War era; finally, Nixon's presidency (or Reagan's, depending on your personal perspective) coincided with a golden era for conservatives, which now appears to be steadily waning.

A crucial catalyst to these elections all having the impact on the direction of American society  that they did is that they all occured against a backdrop of three important trends: economic decline, over-reactive wars, or a climate of paranoia based on perceived enemies abroad which subsequently results in the repression of civil liberties at home.

As Amar points out, these very issues resonate as strongly in this year's election as the four pivot point elections that preceded it--given the recent economic meltdown in Wall Street and looming recession on Main Street, the high cost and unpopularity of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars amongst the general public, and the repeal of a number of civil liberties via legislative measures, deemed necessary as part of President Bush's ‘War on Terror'. Consequently, in years to come we may expect to see the 2008 presidential election prove as influential an electoral event as these aforementioned elections.

While Amar's thesis is intriguing--if perhaps a little too quick to dismiss victories from figures such as Wilson, Carter and Clinton as arberrations simply because they polled below the 50 percent threshold--it also reflects a belief increasingly expressed by members of the media and academia alike that this year's election will bring a pronounced and quite profound sea-change in the social and political landscape in American culture.

More significantly however, in contrast to what Democrats and many members of the media may say, Amar's thesis suggests that this seismic historical shift will not nescessarily be on the condition of an Obama victory on November 4th.

A week ago, I wrote about the possibility of a Sarah Palin candidacy in 2012. Since then, Palin and those close to her appear to have brought this closer to reality by distancing themselves from John McCain. That makes sense if she wants to continue her ascent through the Republican ranks, because recriminations are sure to abound if McCain loses in six days' time. In fact, they have already begun. Joining a growing crowd of conservative commentators and intellectuals, moderate Republicans like Tom Ridge, the former Governor of Pennsylvania, have criticised the choice of Sarah Palin as running mate. (Ridge was widely believed to have been one of McCain's preferred VP picks before concerns about his base pushed him to choose someone more conservative.) Meanwhile, those further to the right have suggested that McCain's problem was that he was not conservative or aggressive enough.Palin has at times come close to voicing this latter critique, publicly urging McCain to "take the gloves off" and make Jeremiah Wright more of an issue. She would certainly not be the moderate wing's choice of candidate in 2012. I argued a week ago that moderates' criticism of her cannot fail to do some damage, but that non-moderates have a disproportionate influence in the primaries. Since then, discussion of her chances in 2012 has intensified, as evidenced by this summary in The Week.  I disagree with the dissenting voice quoted there, who suggests that people like me overestimate her political talents. Uneven though her performance has been this time around, she has shown an ability to draw huge crowds and intense support, and before her brand was tainted she enjoyed widespread popularity. Even more telling are her earlier achievements, which include unseating an incumbent governor in Alaska's Republican primaries, a truly impressive feat.This is not to deny that Palin would face significant challenges. Additional conservative critics may yet emerge once the campaign is over and the need for them to bite their tongues ceases. Assuming McCain loses, she is bound to attract some of the blame. Her popularity in Alaska shows signs of decreasing from its (very high) initial base, and events there may yet damage her. She will face formidable opponents, possibly including a better-funded Mike Huckabee and a re-energised Mitt Romney (whose former staffers have been involved in spreading anti-Palin spin to reporters, according to the American Spectator).  And, awkward though it is to say so, her looks - which constitute a significant part of her appeal for some people - will begin to fade as she goes from 44 to 48.

In a piece noting how Howard Dean's career has turned around since becoming Democratic National Committee Chairman, J. Patrick Coolican argues that the Democrats' bright electoral fortunes in the past couple years are a clear validation of the "fifty state strategy" Dean himself launched in 2005.

By allowing candidates to move closer to the centre over issues such as gun control and abortion rights in certain areas of the country, Coolican argues, the Democrats have become far more competitive across the United States; moreover, Coolican suggests that "Republicans better find themselves a Howard Dean, and fast" if they want to arrest the slow bleed from red to blue that is expected to continue at polling booths next week.

While Coolican is right to praise Dean's energetic stewardship of the Democratic Party in the past three years, and his protracted efforts to court conservative voters, I would be hesitant to suggest - as Coolican strongly implies - that we are witnessing or are on the cusp of some kind of "Democratic Revolution" similar to the one masterminded by Newt Gingrich and his GOP peers in 1994.

Unquestionably, the Democrats are likely to reap even greater electoral spoils in the House and Senate, and are tantalisingly close to securing an overall majority in both. However, is this surge of support fuelled by some enthralling ideological vision for the future outlined by the Democratic leadership, or a substantive legislative and policy agenda serving as a roadmap to traverse the difficult times ahead?

Video below. For my part, I find it quite powerful: Powell talks fluidly and with surprising strength of feeling for over five minutes, pausing to tell the story of a Muslim-American who died in the Iraq War to illustrate the inappropriateness of the 'smear' that Obama is a Muslim. Getting that message across may be the most valuable task Powell performed today, and it carries more weight coming from him than it would from the mouth of any Democrat.

The communist witch-hunt headed by Senator Joe McCarthy in the late 1940s and early 1950s represents one of the darkest periods in American history: an era of frenzied paranoia and suspicion, when distrust and intolerance ran rife throughout many spectrums of American society. That this atmosphere was carefully and deliberately cultivated by senior elected figures, hell-bent on purging what they perceived as the subversive invasion of Communist influences across the nation at the expense of destroying innocent people's lives and reputation in the process, has made it all the more regrettable and reprehensible.

It was this spectre of fear mongering that resonated in the words of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann during her interview (found here) with MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Friday's edition of Hardball. In the interview, Bachmann sought to draw a clear connection between liberal politics, the Left, and anti-Americanism while espousing the usual talking points regarding Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright that McCain surrogates and attack ads have regurgitated in recent days. As Bachmann argued:

"If we look at the collection of friends that Barack Obama has had in his life, it calls into question what Barack Obama's true beliefs and values and thoughts are. His attitudes, values, and beliefs with Jeremiah Wright on his view of the United States-is negative; Bill Ayers, his negative view of the United States. We have seen one friend after another call into question his judgment-but also, what it is that Barack Obama really believes?"

Unfortunately for Bachmann, she clearly didn't have the sufficient intellectual flexibility to weave this charge in a coherent argument, and given sufficient rope to hang herself by Matthews, she suggested that that the American media take a "great look" at the current Congress and investigate how many of its members are "anti-American" as opposed to "pro-American."

It should come as no surprise that Bachmann's performance has drawn sharp criticism from the Democats, and has prompted a campaign to censure her behaviour. The introduction of such a simplistic and politically charged dichotomy into the final weeks of this race, however innocous or ill-crafted, represents an alarming and totally inappropriate reversion of the McCarthyite politics of half a century ago. Whether Bachmann's charge was sanctioned by the McCain camp is moot: this particularly distatestful attack is a direct product of the negativity which has become a mainstay of GOP electoral strategy in recent election cycles, and is a strong indictment of what Peggy Noonan referred to this week as a trend within the Republican Party towards promoting a "new vulgarization" of American politics.

The impact the result of this year's general election will have on the activism of the United States Supreme Court in the years to come has been all too frequently overlooked and underappreciated by political commentators based outside of America.

However, with three Justices likely to vacate the bench in the near or immediate future, and with divisive issues such as abortion rights, affirmative action, and campaign finance reform all likely to come under the Supreme Court's scrutiny sooner rather than later, the next American president will find himself in a prime position to solidy or shift the current ideological composition of the Court will his choice of replacements.

As such, as Herman Schwartz from the Nation discusses in detail, the choice voters make at the ballot box in November will have repercussions for future generations of Americans in the realm of social values equally if not more profound as the economic legacy which will inevitably follow the current volatility in the financial markets.

I'm afraid this post is entirely lacking in substance, but since John McCain's occasionally strange facial expressions probably affected the debate's impact more than the canned substance on offer, I felt I had a duty to share this freeze-frame. Captions are welcome.

 

Those of us who are expecting some last minute drama to emerge from tonight's debate - the third act of what so far has been a relatively lacklustre piece of political theatre - will be sorely disappointed.

There will be no sharp quips or witty sound bytes that leave an indelible imprint on the memory of those who watch at home, or lofty ideas that seem to crystallize in front of our very eyes by virtue of their sheer simplicity and allure. The stilted and excruciatingly restrictive nature of America's presidential debates, combined with the tendency engrained in both candidates to frame and shape their arguments in a perambulatory and occasionally labyrinthine style of rhetoric, will take care of that.

Similarly, those hoping that McCain will somehow pull-out a final trump card, throw a political "Hail Mary" - or one of the plethora of other euphemisms typically employed by commentators in recent days to describe a man desperately searching for a way to postpone his slide into the political abyss - need to reconcile themselves with the cold, hard reality of this year's campaign.