Against the backdrop of a blur political landscape, the US election caravan makes another stop in its long journey, as candidates, campaigners and media descend in South Carolina.
While race, drugs and rock’ n’ roll dominate the political news agenda, accompanied by a mainstream media frenzy about tears and gender issues, Paul Rogers’ latest openDemocracy article, Iran and Pakistan: Danger signals, acts as an alarming reminder on the immediate foreign policy challenges which the US presidential wannabes and their campaigns have been astonishingly ignoring or avoiding, for a nation that has declared and runs an abiding and unpredictable war.
And as George W. Bush’s unpopularity drives even the Republican candidates to put distance between themselves and his policies, “change” seems to be the dominant catchphrase of the 2008 election race. In his openDemocracy article, The United States election: Time for “change”, Godfrey Hodgson examines the nature of this much-vaunted motto, asking critical questions regarding the meaning of “change” in this year’s elections. What does the dissatisfied US public mean when they say they want change, where does this desire derive from and is it already too late?
The systematic effort by the majority of the candidates to depict themselves as harbingers of change is ironically accompanied by a persistent struggle to present an image of unshakable beliefs and consistent positions. Tom Engelheart, journalist, author and editor of Tomdipatch.com, explains why, after the Bush campaign in the 2004 elections where to change was regarded as to “flip-flop,” this buzzword can become an impeachment.
Amar C.Pakhsi joins the “change” debate from his PostGlobal blog in the Washington Post, and gives an international aspect on how the rest of the world views American “change.”
Walter Shapiro, Washington bureau chief of Salon, underlines the dangers that lurk from the continuing prevalence of the emotionally charged issues of gender and race throughout the nomination contest.
Arianna Huffington, author and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, emphasizes in the lack of limelight for foreign-policy issues and argues that Iraq has become the forgotten issue of the 2008 race.
