After so much of talk about change — political and generational — over the last few weeks, the two main parties seem to be settling down to their best known and relatively older candidates. Tuesday’s victories in Florida have positioned Senators John McCain, 71, and Hillary Clinton, 61, to clinch the Republican and Democratic nominations, when nearly two dozen states, including the populous ones like California and New York vote on February 5.Both McCain and Clinton have a big problem to overcome. The ultra conservatives among the Republicans and the extreme liberals among Democrats have a deep aversion to the front-runners in their parties.The Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, did better than McCain among the conservative voters in Florida. McCain’s past liberal position on abortion, his readiness to offer immigrants a legal path to citizenship, and his enthusiasm for combating global warming have all agitated the conservatives.While political boldness has brought McCain significant support from the independent voters, he has fallen foul with the party’s powerful conservative leaders. Watch McCain make peace with the conservative forces in the coming weeks on a range of issues. McCain also expects that the former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who bet everything on Florida and came a cropper, will endorse his candidacy.Divided DemocratsAlthough she continues to hold a lead over Obama in nation-wide polls, Clinton’s difficulties with the liberal wing of the party are becoming acute. The recent rapturous endorsement of Barack Obama by the Kennedys is only symbolic of the growing rift within the Democratic party.Among the former liberal friends drifting away from the Clintons are Tom Daschle, the former Senate Majority Leader, Patrick Leahy, a Senator from Vermont and John Kerry, the 2004 presidential candidate of the Democratic Party and a senator from Massachusetts.Among the many officials who had served Bill Clinton’s presidency but have defected to the Obama campaign is Anthony Lake, the former national security adviser (1993-1997). The popular African American novelist Toni Morrison, who had called Bill Clinton the “first black president,” has now endorsed Obama.As race and gender issues as well as the perceived personal ambitions of the Clintons fracture the Democratic Party, Republicans are gleeful. If the Clinton-Obama rivalry continues to bleed the party, a Republican victory in November need not be entirely fanciful.Lame duckIn India, political leaders never retire. Until death, they nurse the ambition of becoming prime minister or chief minister. Thanks to the two-term rule, the political marginalisation of an American President begins even before he steps down at the end of the second term.On Tuesday President George W. Bush had to advance the timing of his final ‘state of the union’ address, an important moment in the annual American political calendar, to avoid being pushed off the TV screens by the primary results from Florida.Being lame duck does not mean a president has no power to conduct foreign policy. Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton and his own father Bush, Sr., spent time on diplomacy in their final days at the White House. Father Bush signed a nuclear arms control treaty with Russia just before he stepped down, and Clinton was wresting with the Middle East peace process till the end.Price of libertyWhile major American national news outlets like the New York Times and the CNN provide in-depth coverage of the primary season, often the best insights come from the comedy shows.Jay Leno on the NBC, David Letterman on the CBS, and John Stewart of Comedy Central have a ball every night puncturing the bubble around the presidential candidates.Humourists are a great part of the American political tradition. Political irreverence also comes naturally to America, which had had no collective experience of feudalism. Unlike in Europe or Asia, where the acceptance of social hierarchy is all pervasive, Americans are naturally irreverent.America is also founded on the well-known principle of checks and balances, that prevents the concentration of power in any one institution or individual. The comedians serve the Constitution by exposing the leaders to relentless ridicule. For the American political satirists, “irreverence is the price of liberty”.The writer is professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg
