When there are no real elections in your own Motherland, you begin to realize your ardor for prophecy on the side. The exciting primaries fight by the US presidential contenders coincided with tranquil change of power with us. A considerable part of our citizens, that became unused to be interested in politics, looked at what was going on beyond the ocean. There was a great intrigue: for the first time in the history of the most omnipotent state a white woman threw down the glove to a black man. 

Obama and the lady

He might be taken for a TV preacher. The word “changes” is his mantra. “We can believe in changes” is his campaigning slogan. He promises changes to his country. Nothing else, but changes. And that was enough: America is a country of trustful people. “Is he serious, this guy from Illinois? Can he help getting our guys back from Iraq? Can he deal with taxes? Maybe he is able to stop the recession, so that it be possible to sell a house with normal price? Hey, he really looks different from those spongers from Washington! They say he is something between John Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Well, if he means it, we mean it too!”  

A year and a half ago, anticipating the rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, the well-known observer Charles Krauthammer asked carefully his compatriots: will America have enough emancipation to elect a woman or enough political correctness to go for the son of an immigrant from Kenya?     

It’s not only that the American elector has had enough maturity. “Obama-mania” has become the newest American trend. The senator from Illinois with a 4-year-experience of a politician has become the hope of the country that experienced three times a great shock during last eight years: 11/9, Iraq, mortgage crisis.  

Very few were able to forecast his victory in the primaries. Now there is an opinion that Hillary lost due to shortage of money (she still owes 11 million dollars) and due to being disliked by the leadership of the Democratic Party.  

But let us cut back for a year ago. That time money was coming in plenty to the campaigning staff of the senator from New York State. There were periods where her moneybox was replenished with $10 millions weekly. Hillary looked like the confidence itself. She was backed by the bankers from Wall Street who were tired of squandering by the Republican administration. She knew beforehand in which state she was going to win, and the prospective results quite satisfied her. The failure began somewhere in the middle of February. Marc Penn, the main strategist of the Clinton’s staff committed a fatal mistake when he stated to the press that the chances by Obama were zero for becoming the first black President in the US history. He forecast that Obama would be out of the race in April as the key states, like Pennsylvania with its 158 super-delegates, would anyway vote for Hillary Clinton. That statement was a gross violation of the party’s bylaw; it is not accepted that the final chances of the contenders from same party be estimated at the primaries stage. Presumption by Penn was disliked by the party’s leadership and by many super-delegates who turned away from Clinton at the end.        

Barak Obama managed to get the top record 265 million dollars to his campaigning fund and the votes of the majority of super-delegates. 28 August he will be officially confirmed as a contender for Democratic Party for the November elections. But one may say that the final stage of the presidential race has begun already. Primaries were the time of brilliance of polemic improvisation, spectacular traveling from state to state, whale of hands-shaking and hugs, and absolute poorness of content. That was a competition of personalities. Now the time has come for competition of political platforms.     

Is negating Bush enough?

The American nation is going to take another maturity exam. Whatever delicate the choice was between a white woman and a black man, anyway it is much more difficult choosing between a white man and a black man. It’s ironic that now Barak Obama seems to return to his initial campaigning position. Would you risk staking at him in his struggle with John McCain? Me personally, no. The matter is not only that it is going to be a problem attracting the electorate of Hillary Clinton, one third of which is willing to vote for McCain, as the polls say. McCain’s advantage is his foreign policy attitude: Atlantic solidarity, relations with Russia, Balkans, Iraq. McCain sees clearly the place of America in the world. Significantly, he was supported by the four previous state secretaries: Henry Kissinger, Lawrence Eagleburger, George Shultz and Alexander Haig.         

Barak Obama has been building his campaign on negating the policy by George Bush. Day by day he repeats that McCain is like Bush of four years ago. Such a tactic is unlikely to bring him fruits in the months remaining before it’s November. First, McCain has an image of the Republican in terms of his party belonging, and the image of solo rebel in his life. Even his rivals from Democrats’ camp admit that he is an honest and disinterested person, disliked by his orthodox party fellows. Second – and this is the most interesting – McCain will find enough arguments to prove that the outcomes of the ruling by Bush the junior are not so bad. Examples? The US has extended and continues to extend the NATO ranks. It has managed that independence of Kosovo be declared and Iran be condemned. The anti-missile defense system is being built in Europe. And even in Iraq the US has used ably the contradictions between Shiites and Sunnites so that now none of the both groups want American troops to leave. In the meanwhile, the casualties by the US in Iraq have reduced to top minimum and the profits by American companies are growing with the new contracts. The main challenges for America are presented by Russia and China, and Barak Obama, who never saw their leaders in his life, is not the man able to take those challenges.      

In October 2007 John McCain published his foreign policy program where he promised to expel Russia from G8 for elimination of political freedom. Russian expert community did not give much consideration to those promises as well as to McCain’s personality on the whole. The political scientist Sergei Makarov stated then that McCain had made a lot of sharp statements against Russia and they should not be considered seriously. He also said that the chances by McCain for becoming president were small and he represented only part of a political American class. On the other hand, that was a good warning that there are such people. Well, that forecast did not come true. “Such people” not only “there are”, but they are also going at full speed to the White House. So what is to be done? It turns out that nothing! In case the “shell-shocked with the cold war” McCain wins, it will be easier for us to resist him standing for our national interests. Such was the opinion given by the journalist Mikhail Leontyev in his interview to Echo Moskvy. This journalist translates timely and without too much of scrupulousness the feeling by the ruling elite. This elite wants McCain, as they see a progressively thinking American in Obama, who is going to be sympathized by the third-world countries. So it’s not going to be very productive measuring swords with such a leader. This logic is too light and delusive. The problem is not only that McCain has softened his “hawk-like” message for Russia, after the primaries, while Obama can talk a lot of tough things. The problem is that, being a novice in foreign policy matters and being a subject to influence and manipulation, he might lead the situation to a crisis similar to the Caribbean one.            

On the other hand, Obama may easily and drastically improve Russia-US relations. For that, even without looking into Dmitry Medvedev’s eyes, he might return the things to the state they were at his party fellow Bill Clinton –t hat’s the moratorium for rolling out the national anti-missile defense system (however, the money has been allotted for that already) and for further extending of NATO (however, it has been voted for by the Congress). There are no other serious contradictions between Russia and the US on the global agenda at the moment.  

Novaya Gazeta information

According to the poll by a TV station CBS, 48% of the respondents are willing to vote for the 46-year-old black Democrat Barak Obama, while 42% are wiling to do it for his 71-year-old rival John McCain.