My default position is to prefer the Democrats to win any election rather than the Republicans. I tend not to get too worked up about it when it comes to the presidency though. There are a number of reasons for this but one that is overlooked to a degree I find inexplicable is that the powers of the US president are circumscribed by Congress to an extent that is, I think, without parallel in any other democracy.

In other words, instead of hearing the cliche that the American president is the most powerful person in the world, I think it would reflect reality better if more people said that Congress, in relation to the executive, is the most powerful legislature in the world.

This is one of a number of reasons why I have misgivings about Obama. He has for me the dual advantage of being neither a Republican nor Hillary Clinton - but whatever other problems might occur should he become president, I’d bet on this one: surely disillusion will follow hard on the heels of the euphoria we’ll see should he win the presidential election? This is a function of his limited powers, which will be exacerbated in his case with the fervour of expectations now surrounding him.

Obama is undoubtedly charismatic - but one of the features, and dangers, of charisma in politics is that the carrier of charisma becomes a repository for people’s best expectations almost regardless of what they are or what they do. When you have someone with charisma, people take them as representing almost anything they want - regardless of the reality. This is why, for example, Princess Diana could be for the monarchist the incarnation of a royal fairy-tale whilst simultaneously being an anti-establishment figure to those of a republican disposition - rather than what she was: a publicity-seeking, imploding bag of poisonous self-pity.

As for Obama, what we know - rather than what people want to believe - gives me cause for concern. For one, he strikes me as being woefully inexperienced. He is also rather conservative - having had a record, as far as one can tell, of being somewhat accommodating, flexible, in his stance on a variety of issues if this serves to further his career. There is, as far as I’m aware, no example of him being prepared to court unpopularity over an issue over which he feels strongly. Also, while I won’t pretend to know what is best in this present situation, like a number of people while I welcome his expressions of commitment to Afghanistan, I treat with great scepticism the idea that the American involvement there is something that can be divorced from its role in Iraq.

However - and it was this thought that prompted this post - the more short-term concern has to do with his electoral strategy, and this is related to the whole issue of his charismatic style mentioned above. Maybe it’s pure prejudice, evoked by the sight of Germans getting excited at a public rally and waving flags - even if the flags in question happen to carry the Stars and Stripes - but I can’t help getting the feeling that the tone and manner of his European tour wasn’t very wise. It might play well on the pages of the European press but in America?

It’s the feeling he’s peaked too soon and the assumption that the election is as good as won isn’t going to go down well with a significant section of the American electorate. People don’t like this and this thought floated through my mind: is this like Neil Kinnock’s triumphal entrance at party conference prior to the 1992 election, only on a much larger scale? I have no idea but it occurred to me again when I read Paulie’s short post on the subject:

“Am I the only one that thinks that McCain at 5/2 today is a very good price?”

No, you’re not. I’m not going to have a punt for two reasons:

a) I never gamble. Nothing virtuous about this. Deep down I’m a shallow human being with an addictive personality and an adolescent’s impulse towards immediate gratification. Fortunately, gambling is one vice I simply don’t understand.

b) Even if I did, in this case I trust reason would prevail anyway. Having ignored my own advice - that in politics it is folly to attempt to predict the future - the memory of failing to predict the SNP win in Glasgow East is likely to be a strong deterrent for quite some time.

But no, Paulie is not alone. I’ll eschew any temptation to predict the future this time but we are justified, I think, in remembering what we know from the past: people, voters, do not like being taken for granted - and I think this might prove to be a problem for Senator Obama’s campaign. (Predicting again while pretending not to - I can resist anything but temptation.) He is still just a Senator, right? The thing is, he seems to be surrounded by a whole bunch of people who seem to have forgotten this already. Don’t think the American electorate have though.

Aleksandar Hemon writes about Radovan Karadzic in the New York Times:

[Karadzic] thundered, “Do not think you will not lead Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell and the Muslim people into possible annihilation, as the Muslim people cannot defend themselves in case of war here.” Throughout his tirade, he clutched the lectern edges, as though about to hurl it at his audience, but then let go of it to stab the air with his forefinger at the word “annihilation.” The Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegovic, a Muslim, was visibly distressed.

It was a spectacular, if blood-curdling, performance. Mr. Karadzic, who was arrested last week after 13 years in hiding, was then president of the hard-line nationalist Serbian Democratic Party, which already controlled the parts of Bosnia that had a Serbian majority, but he was not a member of the Parliament, nor did he hold any elective office. His very presence rendered the Parliament weak and unimportant; backed by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army, he spoke from the position of unimpeachable power over the life and death of the people the Parliament represented.

Watching the news broadcast covering the session, neither my parents nor I could initially comprehend what he meant by “annihilation.” For a moment or two we groped for a milder, less terrifying interpretation — perhaps he meant “historical irrelevance”? For what he was saying was well outside the scope of our middling imagination, well beyond the habits of normalcy we desperately clung to as war loomed over our irrelevant lives.

Then I understood that he was wagging the stick of genocide at the Bosnian Muslims, while the unappetizing carrot was their bare survival. “Don’t make me do it,” he was essentially saying. “I will be at home in the hell I create for you.”

Karadzic envisioned himself as the hero of an epic poem to the extent that he even, while in disguise, “recited an epic poem in which he himself featured as the main hero, performing epic feats of extermination”.  The fucking maniac.

Read Hemon’s article here.

Hay, I don’t want to say anything, but I think your American flags are broken. They’re not on fire. When was the last time you saw that overseas? You know, I’ve got to tell you. There’s something about a charismatic leader rallying huge crowds of Germans in a large public square.

Jon Stewart in The Daily Show (via Karwan Baschi)

A wave of bombings left 29 people dead and 88 injured in the Indian city of Ahmedabad yesterday, prompting fears of renewed communal unrest. Up to 16 separate small bombs went off in several parts of the city, which has a history of violent clashes between the Hindu majority and Muslim minority. The blasts came a day after seven synchronised explosions rocked the southern city of Bangalore, the hub of India’s burgeoning information technology industry, killing two and wounding five others.Yesterday’s attacks in Ahmedabad happened in two waves early in the evening local time. Some of the devices were hidden in lunchboxes or bicycles. The first series exploded near busy market places. The second, about 20 minutes later, went off in and around a hospital where casualties were being taken. At least six people died there.

‘We saw a blue bag near the trauma centre, and before we could react we saw it explode in a shine of blinding light, and some 40 people were hit by flying shrapnel,’ said Vipul Patil, a doctor at the Dhanwantari Hospital.

No one claimed responsibility but suspicion immediately fell on Islamist militants. Prithviraj Chavan, a junior in the Prime Minister’s office, called yesterday’s bombings ‘deplorable’ and said they were set off by people ‘bent upon creating a communal divide in the country’. That is the sort of language officials tend to use when blaming Islamic militants suspected of being behind a series of co-ordinated bomb attacks across the country in recent years. Targets have included mosques, Hindu temples and trains.

Fucking Indian imperialists — sticking their noses into shit where it isn’t wanted or needed — the religion of peace should make it clear to them that it will not be tolerated.