The three elections

摘要

Put all this together and what do you get? Is this, as cheerleaders on both sides claim, the most consequential election in a generation, or will little change? Will Barack Obama, if elected, soon find that Washington "boils all the hope out of him"? Will John McCain find that once in the Oval Office the maverick becomes a mouse?rnThe first answer is that, no matter which contender wins the prize, America will tread a very different path from the gloomy one down which George Bush has taken it. Both Mr McCain and Mr Obama set greater store by multilateral organisations and the value of partnership than Mr Bush has done. Either would close the prison at Guan-tanamo Bay, that standing insult to civilised global values, and either would sign America up for some form of climate-control agreement.