Many decades back I had read a little American cartoon strip in India. In it a small kid returns from school with a grade card full of C grades. On seeing them his father asks, "Son what do you want to be, when you grow up with grades like these ". To this pat replies the kid, "Guess I shall have to settle in for President after all". Well I don't know what kind of grades George Bush got in school, but the majority of Americans think he has earned a card full of C grades, in his eight years at the White House. The news is full of gloom and doom. The housing and mortgage crisis, the rising gas prices, the turmoil on Wall Street, the state of the economy, talks of recession and layoffs, Iraq and so on. Thank God the elections are coming! This election year has been an awesome entertainment package for the whole world to watch. With 24/7 news, blogs, talk shows, talking heads, comedians, S.N.L. (Saturday night live) and political cartoons, the whole process has seemed like a mega soap opera. The stars of the show had elements of race, gender, class and even numbers. For example John McCain excelled in numbers. He has 7 kids from two wives, 8 houses and 17 cars. He is 72 years old. As for class, The Economist described a typical Obama supporter as a wine and latte drinker. A typical Hillary supporter as a beer drinker! The primaries were like a 'reality show' series in which the candidates got filtered out one by one, so as to lead to the final contestant on each side. The Republicans quickly narrowed it down to John McCain. The final Democratic race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was long, tough and almost nauseating. It was also an emotional roller coaster for the supporters of Hillary Clinton. Finally Obama was the chosen one. After the primaries came the two party conventions, which formally announced the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates on both sides. So it was Obama and Biden on the Democratic side and McCain and Palin on the Republican side. The four day conventions were like infomercials about the biographies of the four stars of the show! Then came the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates. These were like block buster movies, going by their ratings. It turns out that more Americans watched these debates than the Olympics in Beijing this year. Now you know why I call this election year the super-duper entertainment package. When this whole process started it was supposed to be a cakewalk for the Democrats. The pollsters had predicted the final race to be between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guiliani. How wrong were they? The media has done a great job of informing the public about the candidates. The one hour biographies on CNN and the long articles about their character defining moments in New York Times were very useful. You can also judge a candidate by the kind of endorsements he gets. For Obama they came from Caroline Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey and Al Gore long time back. Now he has also been endorsed by the Clintons, Colin Powell and many prominent Republicans who have switched sides quite recently. As a seer of this whole process one wonders what does it take to become an American President in today's world? Just to run a successful campaign the candidate has to have the following qualities: • The ability to organize and generate funds for the campaign like the CEO of a company.
• Magnetism of a rock star.
• Debating skills of a lawyer.
• People skills of a talk show host.
• Physical stamina of a young mother who dances to the baby's tunes 24/7.
• Stomach of an inter-state truck driver who eats only in road-side diners.
• The ability to stay away from family for long time, like a travelling salesman.
• The ability to pull off long days on few hours of sleep, like a college student.
• The brains of a surgeon to remember all the pertinent facts, issues, statistics and to make connections among all these.
These are just the tip of the iceberg! The American public demands a lot from its Presidential candidates. Also in today's world of minute to minute statistical reports on different issues and never ending scrutiny by media into their private lives, a candidate has to be made of some special metal to survive a campaign and come out as a winner. So far nothing has been predictable about the race to the White House. Although Obama is clearly ahead in the race, there are a lot of unknown factors. Some of these are the voter turnout, percentage of newly registered voters, percentage of citizens in different age groups etc. When you give birth to a child you are told that it is the easiest thing to do. Raising the child is the real tough job. Similarly winning a campaign is the easy part, governing a nation saddled with problems is the tough part. As the Election day approaches on November 4th this year, I think about the candidates in this fall season. Just as the leaves have to fall in this season to usher into an era of new life and growth similarly the Autumn of Bush years is over and I am ready for the Spring of Obama years.

Ratna Dalal

Ratna Dalal