By Angus McDowall

The influential Democratic commentator Joe Klein, who wrote the film Primary Colours about the Bill Clinton presidency, wrote on the Time Magazine website that Mr Obama was the narrow winner.


 

"Obama did everything he had to do, with few if any mistakes," he wrote. "I thought McCain did less so. The early snap polling seems to agree with me, but I'd caution against taking those too seriously. This was a big event in this campaign–the beginning of the end. It will need to be digested, discussed around the water cooler and the dinner table. But the race has not been decided yet." John Pitney Jr, writing on the website of the conservative National Review Online, thought Mr McCain gave the stronger debate. "If appearances alone decided the debate's winner, then John McCain won," he wrote.

Ignore all commentators' opinions expressed without evidence. The winner is determined by the numbers, especially the votes of the undecided. Here are some preliminary answers:

Barack Obama's candidacy in the US presidential elections is being seen as historic not only in the US but by some black leaders in Latin America, who hope his run for the White House can encourage change in their own countries.

It is not the first time Afro-Latin Americans have looked northwards for inspiration.

"Obama is a great point of reference for us," says Afro-Brazilian Senator Paulo Paim.

"In Latin America, racism has always been half-disguised. It has always been said that it doesn't exist, while at the same time blacks have been kept out of the spheres of power."

At least 110 million Latin Americans are believed to be of African descent, compared with an estimated 40 million African-Americans in the US.

Brazil has never had a black president, despite the fact that people of African and mixed-race ancestry make up nearly half the population.

Apart from Haiti and the Dominican Republic which have black majorities, only Venezuela and Cuba have had black leaders during the 20th Century.

Realistic inspiration

So, are Latin American voters ready to elect black presidents consistently?

"Of course, when they have black candidates with qualities and charisma," says Epsy Campbell, the leader of Costa Rica's Citizens Action Party.

"The obstacles aren't in the voters, but in the media and party structures that you have to face to become a candidate."

Mr Paim offers a similar view: "The money spent on a black candidate's election campaign is much less that the money spent on a white candidate's. My own case was an exception - that's how I got into the Senate."

One current Latin American president who has broken with such traditional political practices is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

"By the criteria of many people, Chavez qualifies not as black but as someone of mixed racial ancestry," says George Reid Andrews, professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh.

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Is it any surprise that Sarah Palin "electrified" the Republican convention with her acceptance speech as John McCain's running mate? Her public speaking skills were surely a major attraction for the Republican ticket, skills honed not only during her years of public service but also as a beauty pageant contestant and local television sportscaster. But beneath the polish and poise are her words, and on those we must focus. For me, two portions of her speech stood out - her belittling of Barack Obama's community organizing experience and her questioningof the Obama family's patriotism.

 

Governor Palin likened her government experience to Senator Obama's community organizing, except that Palin had "actual responsibilities." Community organizers have been the foundation of many great American movements, not the least of which was the Civil Rights movement. It certainly wasn't local politicians who inspired the brave acts that brought civil rights into the American and world spotlights. Palin's barb demonstrated a troubling lack of knowledge of the value of community organizing in this country. Palin also pointed out how small town people are "always proud of America," a not-so-subtle reference to Michelle Obama's quote concerning her being proud of America "for the first time" as her husband's candidacy began to blossom. While Ms. Obama no doubt regrets this remark, the fact remains that the African American experience in the United States is markedly different than the white experience. With the record of community service and support the Obamas possess, questioning their patriotism and pride as a political maneuver is nothing short of insulting. But it sure was a nice speech, wasn't it?

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By RW Johnsonin Cape Town

SOUTH AFRICA’S president, Thabo Mbeki, was toppled from power yesterday by his rival Jacob Zuma, president of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), when its national executive committee took the decision to sack him.

Gwede Mantashe, the ANC’s secretary-general, announced that the executive had “decided to recall the president of the republic before his term of office expires”.

Mbeki, 66, instructed his office to issue a statement saying: “The president has obliged and will step down after all constitutional requirements have been met.”

He may be allowed to linger in office a few days more so he can attend a meeting of the United Nations in New York this week and make his formal farewells to world leaders.

Mbeki accepted his political demise calmly, said Mantashe. “He did not display shock . . . He welcomed the news and agreed that he is going to participate in the process and the formalities.”

Nevertheless, it was a humiliation for the aloof, Sussex University-educated Mbeki, who has been president for nine years and largely ran the country during Nelson Mandela’s presidency before that.

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The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004 — about two and one-half percentage points.

Certainly, Republican John McCain has his own obstacles: He's an ally of an unpopular president and would be the nation's oldest first-term president. But Obama faces this: 40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.

'Less likely to vote for Obama'

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents — voters Obama can't win the White House without — agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

Such numbers are a harsh dose of reality in a campaign for the history books. Obama, the first black candidate with a serious shot at the presidency, accepted the Democratic nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a seminal moment for a nation that enshrined slavery in its Constitution.

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“I wasn’t at the bridge at Selma,” he said in an interview, “but the struggle for civil rights was the animating political element of my life.”

Mr. Biden, Democrat of Delaware, has devoted much of his 35 years in the Senate, including eight years as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to matters of race and civil rights. He has been instrumental in expanding voting rights, supporting affirmative action, passing the Violence Against Women Act, expanding the definition of hate crimes and working toward ending employment discrimination.

Mr. Biden now hopes to cap his career by being elected vice president to the first African-American president.

But three episodes from his Senate career show how treacherous issues of race remain and have left scuff marks on what most agree is an otherwise admirable record. They concerned busing, criminal sentencing and the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

In 1978, as Mr. Biden was seeking re-election, his hometown, Wilmington, was in turmoil over a federally mandated cross-district school busing plan.

Although the segregation of Wilmington’s schools was for the most part a result of housing and economic patterns, and not of deliberate government actions, the federal courts imposed a busing plan that many parents and politicians, including Mr. Biden, considered punitive.

It erased district lines between the largely black Wilmington schools and predominantly white suburban districts. Tens of thousands of city and suburban children would be bused to school, sometimes dozens of miles from their homes.

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Their conversation started with small talk about the former president's commute to his Harlem office and ended after a lunch of sandwiches, flatbread pizza and salad from Cosi.

"They discussed the campaign briefly, but mostly talked about how the world has changed since September 11, 2001," their spokesmen said in a joint statement. The meeting came on the seventh anniversary of the attacks and shortly before Obama was to visit Ground Zero with Republican presidential rival John McCain.

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Born of a Kenyan father and an American mother, Senator Obama has worked his way up to the summit of American politics. His dashing good looks, solid academic credentials, courage, vision, sense of humour, outstanding oratory skills in transmitting his message of change and hope earned him a place in history as the first black to win the presidential nomination ticket of a major political party in the USA .He is firmly on course to further create history by emerging as the first black President of the United States of America.

His rallies have attracted record crowds in the USA. There could be no better to show what a global phenomenon he has become than his recent two week trip to the Middle East in Europe. King Abdullah of Jordan personally drove him to the airport, in Kuwait he aimed and scored a perfect three pointer in a basketball court before addressing American troops stationed there. In Iraq he met with Prime Minister Maliki, in Israel he met with Prime Minister Ehud Omert and other top political leaders, he met with Palistinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, the President of Afghanistan. In Germany he met with Prime Minister Mikael and addressed a record crowd.

Senator Obama has not hidden the fact that his father grew up tethering goats in Kenya to borrow the words he used in Germany. As aforementioned, Presidential elections in the USA are always of great interest to the rest of the world. Without thinking much about the eventual out come, there is definitely a whole lot that Africa can learn from the political exploits and message of Senator Obama.

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