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More from Britain on the Clinton-Obama race …
Like a metronome, European affection seems to swing steadily back and forth between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Following Tuesday’s primaries, many Europeans seem to have swung back in favor of Clinton. Anatole Kaletsky, a columnist for London’s “Times” newspaper, said that Clinton now seems most likely to become the next president of the United States. He said that Clinton has two qualities to set against Obama’s charisma.
“Her first and most obvious quality is that she is a woman. While official opinion, especially in the U.S. media, self-righteously insists that America is an egalitarian, multicultural society where gender and race should play no role in political allegiance or personal advancement, the fact is that this is nonsense,” he wrote. “Everyone knows that women and blacks continue to lag far behind white male Americans by virtually every social and economic criterion.” He said that if American women unite around Clinton she’ll be unbeatable in November.
Kaletsky said that Clinton’s second big advantage over Obama is John McCain.
“An Obama-McCain contest would be seen as a match of inexperience against old age,” he wrote. “Obama may have a better record on Iraq than Clinton, but on almost every other issue of importance to the American public she is clearly ahead.”
Moreover, she is a Clinton — and can hope to reassure voters with her record of successful centrist economic policies when she was First Lady in the White House. “Obama, by contrast, is on record as being the most consistently liberal member of the Senate, with arguably the most left-wing economic and foreign policy platform since George McGovern was beaten by Richard Nixon, despite the revulsion against the Vietnam War,” he wrote.
In the end, Kaletsky warned that the world should probably prepare for a President McCain or Clinton. President Obama may have to wait until 2012 or 2016.
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