There are some who are saying that 2008 will be a watershed election year in the US; that somehow, things will change, that American politics will not be the same, not matter what the results. That could be true, but it’s a line we have heard before in more than one country’s elections.

Certainly it seems to surpass all previous elections as far as preparation. While the behind-the-scenes work likely started years ago, certainly things have been front and centre for over a year now, with final elections still eight months away and no likelihood of the tempo changing other than the trimming of the candidates down to one a party. I don’t think anyone, this side of the border or not, has seen this level of electioneering.

I suppose Bush is not a hard act to follow. No doubt he has his supporters, but I have a feeling that even with a Republican McCain win, a collective sign of relief will go up in the US, if not around the world, as Bush begins his exit. Maybe, like Churchill in WWII, he was the right man for a particular time in the wake of 9-11, but he’s managed to keep nerves on edge around the world since that time.

Many Canadians are not familiar with the peculiar election process used by the Americans. While I took a U.S. Government and Politics course back in my past (about when Nixon won a landslide in ’72), things have changed and no doubt U.S. readers like Dawn and Phil (unknown to each other; not the Everly Brothers) might poke holes in my concept of how it works. Please do.

In Canada we have a strongly party system—our parties hold “brief” conventions where leaders are selected, and in the subsequent election, the leader of the winning party takes the position of Prime Minister. Although we can (and presently do) run with minority situations in the House of Commons (our equivalent of the American House of Representatives), in most situations the Prime Minister and the Commons are of a common party.

In the American system, the President and the Congress (Houses of Representatives and the Senate) can be of opposite parties, and in recent history we have often seen this, with a Republican President and a Democrat-dominated Congress. Representatives in this Congress are elected every two years, so the power in the House of Representatives can change halfway through a presidency. Senators are elected for six years, with one-third up for election every two years.

In spite of that possibility of an opposing Congress, the US President has a lot of power in comparison to the Canadian P.M., and the elections of their President is crucial to their next four years of government. What we are seeing now are the “primaries”, elections that in a strange process of steps determine who will carry the standard for the two main parties that are likely to hold power: Republican or Democrat. The process is confusing, as each party has differing rules about how these primaries are interpreted: the general notion is that a candidate who wins a state primary wins the party “delegates” from that state, who will attend a later party convention and vote for that candidate. This is confused in one aspect that sometimes winning a state carries all the delegates from that state, while in other situations the delegates are pro-rated according to how the vote went, and confused further by the presence in the Democratic Party of “super-delegates” from the state, who are made up of past and present party officials and higher government officials from that state. The Democrats have 796 of these Super Delegates, plenty to swing things either way toward the just over 2000 delegates that will be needed to win the party mandate.

The Republicans, after a strange start in their primaries, seem to have settled out to a comfortable situation. John McCain, who was initially considered an “also ran” candidate who would be dropping out early, has surprised all forecasters and is now so far ahead of Huckabee (and how could you have a President named “Huckabee” anyway?) that mathematically he has the nod for the Republican candidate for President.

Democrats are worried. Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama are so close in the primaries that there is unlikely to be a clear win for either going into the deciding convention. Both candidates bring firsts to the Presidential campaign: Clinton would be the first female President, while Obama would be the first black President. In the wake of the Bush years, the Democrats are ripe for taking the office of the Presidency, but political scientists know that candidates who are somehow “unusual” have historically often brought the situation of vocal public support in the campaigns, followed by a reluctance to vote for them when they close the polling booth curtain.

What the Democrats need, what any party needs, is a show of overwhelming support for a candidate early in the primaries, so the party is swept along with a candidate that all members eventually support, and the public is lulled into the notion (however naïve) that all of the party is overwhelmingly behind this person.

Democrats are not going to get that. What they seem aimed to get is a convention heavily divided, where the outcome might well be brokered in backroom meetings where delegates and super delegates are traded back and forth for favors and promises, vouchers for the political trough, and the public is given enough details and innuendos by the media to leave them feeling that a lot is being manipulated, including them.

It seems a strange irony that the Democrats, long protesting against the apparent hidden agendas and back-room dealings of the Bush years, might go into a presidential election with the same labels on their backs, and a party heavily divided.

For armchair political observers in both our nations, it should be an interesting eight months. I wonder how many people will hold fast to a belief that the next President comes out of a flag-waving surge of American pride and patriotism, or sadly feel that he or she is simply spit out of a well-oiled political machine.

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