Spain or Australia?

The easy victory of PM John Howard in Australia may be a harbinger for the
US election. Although the media, with its usual left-liberal bias, called it
a very close race, actually when people came to vote it was not that close
at all. Howard's Liberal-National coalition has increased its lead in
Parliament. It seems that an incumbent with experience and a clear policy
to stay the course in Iraq, is more likely to win over someone who has
limited experience and wants to "cut and run." The Aussies are not the
Spaniards, who elected the Labor candidate after the bombings in Madrid.
Likewise I suspect that even though John Kerry is a viable alternative
candidate to Bush, he has made too many zigzags regarding Iraq for many to
really take him seriously. In the debate a few days ago he contradicted
himself again by saying that he did not support removing Saddam Hussein, and
then that he did. I think when the chips are down the American people will
also not want to "cut and run," but rather stay the course and see the Iraq
situation through.
For all the faults in the current situation, Afghanistan just held their
first elections in over 20 years, and even though the security situation in
Iraq is bad, nevertheless there are many positive features that rarely get
mentioned by the media, because they are not news. Remember in the run up
to the war the anti-war critics were predicting disaster, with a million
Iraqi refugees, 100,000 casualties and a probable famine. Not only did none
of this happen, but within a few months the electricity and water supplies
were back to pre-war levels, and now you never hear about them because they
are working. Kids are going to re-built schools and government is beginning
to work.
The main problem is that the spoilers want to see the Coalition forces
defeated and expelled at any cost. But, in Najjaf they were defeated and in
Sadr City, the stronghold of Muqtadr al Sadr's Mehdi Army, there is the
possibility of a truce whereby they lay down their arms and get paid for
doing so. At the moment peace prevails there, although it might not last.
Of course, the above is based on the assumption that Iraq is the key
election issue in the campaign, as it has apparently been. But, the
economic situation looms large as an alterative issue and the next debate in
Tempe, Arizona on Weds is supposed to focus on that. Not unexpectedly Kerry
has done well in the debates, but Bush has held his own, and in the end it
is unlikely that the debates will derail Bush.
The final point is that there has not been another mega-terrorist incident
in the US since 9/11. Or rather I should say "so far" because it is clearly
the strategy of the terrorists to hit a country before its election in order
to change the voting pattern. However, if they did do this I think they
would have misjudged the US, very much as the Japanese did. You don't want
to rouse a "sleeping giant." I predict that the US election will follow the
Australian pattern rather than the Spanish one.