Elections hold some intriguing ironies

Having spent a good part of my life covering changes of government brought about by bayonets and tanks, I am always in awe of the democratic and bloodless way in which millions of Americans go to the polls to decide who shall govern them.

Yet there are some intriguing ironies about the elections of 2006 now just days away.

The traditional political wisdom is that the economy, not foreign policy, determines the outcome of U.S. national elections. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush lost re-election because Bill Clinton paid scrupulous heed to his advisers' mantra: "It's the economy, stupid."

The American economy is better off today under the present President Bush than it was in his father's time. The stock market has cracked the 12,000 ceiling. Unemployment is down to 4.6 percent. Gas prices are propitiously dropping on election eve.

Yet it is foreign policy — "the war against terrorism" as the Republicans put it, "the war in Iraq" as the Democrats put it — that has dominated the campaign. The Republicans have cast Nancy Pelosi as a kind of wicked witch of the West, or at least from California, who, if she came to preside over the congressional House, would urge surrender in Iraq and bring the troops precipitately home. The Democrats have cast the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld triumvirate as a band of Goth-like warmongers that would seek to stifle freedoms at home while dealing military destruction abroad.

Another anomaly is that the midterm elections of 2006 are being used as a kind of previewing test of the presidential elections to come in 2008. This is always a fascinating curiosity to non-American observers of the U.S. political process, many of whom hail from countries where election campaigns are held to as short a period as six weeks.

Though nobody has actually declared themselves a presidential candidate at this time, a bunch of candidates who coyly proclaim themselves unannounced are campaigning vigorously.

Of the names in play on the Republican side, probably the most believable is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who, when pestered by reporters, protests she really, really isn't interested in the job. But Sen. John McCain is clearly running, crisscrossing the country to make speeches and line up supporters and exchange verbal shots with Hillary Clinton, the foremost runner on the Democratic side. Mitt Romney is out there assuring that a sharp governor from a liberal state like Massachusetts can garner national support. Bill Frist is busy reassuring that a senator from Tennessee who sometimes has trouble bringing an unruly Senate in Washington to heel could do a dandy job of running the country.