Man: 'I never saw this episode.'

Woman: 'I love the series Desperate White House Wives.'

                                      [Tribune de Geneve, Switzerland]

Tribune de Geneve, Switzerland

A Campaign Oh So American …

"American presidential campaigns are unique because they are so unpredictable. While one truth seems called for by the polls, it is then belied by the vote. While the pundits - those stars of the media circus - designate a frontrunner, the people regularly prove them wrong."

By Chief Editor Pierre Ruetschi

Translated By Sandrine Ageorges

January 10, 2008

Tribune de Geneve - Switzerland - Original Article (French)

American presidential campaigns are unique because they are so unpredictable. While one truth seems called for by the polls, it is then belied by the vote. While the pundits - those stars of the media circus - designate a frontrunner, the people regularly prove them wrong.

Bill Clinton made his comeback in New Hampshire in 1992 and in 2000, John McCain made his surprise breakthrough in the same state. At we begin 2008, it is Hillary Clinton who has defied all the polls by resuming her advantage over Barack Obama. We see neither logic nor omens there. Bill Clinton eventually prevailed, John McCain was squashed. Only one truth emerges today: the race is completely wide open on the Democratic side between two extraordinary candidates, in the truest sense of the term. A woman and a Black man.

Beyond programs that in many respects overlap, these two characteristics [being a woman or a Black person] are crucial in this primary race. This Hillary Clinton owes her “miraculous” comeback to the votes of women who rallied massively behind her. And if Barack Obama has been careful to go beyond the racial issue to target a wider audience, it is his Afro-American identity and atypical geniality that seduces.

In this campaign, genes, personality and emotion weigh more heavily than ever. How many percentage points did Mrs. Clinton earn by shedding a tear, demonstrating that she’s not the hard, cold woman she was thought to be? At this stage, voters entrust support to the person who best embodies "their" America.

Yet American Democrats offer two fundamentally different faces; on one side, that of a strong, brilliant, iron-willed woman with tenacious enemies and a Washington insider. On the other side, a young, charismatic, Afro-American political novice who has everything to prove. Both are candidates of quality and change after the Bush era.

But while seeking to prove themselves, they must take care not to self-destruct in a fratricidal dual. John McCain and other Republicans, who now have a lower profile, are waiting the next new development. Nothing is over.

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