Politics from a southern clime

Federal Canadian politics could be interesting, but it appears as though Liberal leader Stephane Dion just won't let it happen.

Like Canadians always do when things get dull or snowy, - or both, we take a look at the republic to the south.

After one apparently stolen election and one won with the aid of the vanquished, the Americans are fixin' to have a real electoral spectacle, unlike anything we've seen in decades -- not since the Reagan years, or even Johnson-Goldwater, or even Kennedy-Nixon.

George W. Bush isn't going to be president this time next year. Given how he's bungled a war and the wealth distribution in his country, it's nothing short of amazing he got to serve a second term - won fair and square, sort of. Add to that, in order to get an end of the war - the Iraq intervention - Bush's father, former president George H.W. Bush, and cronies former state secretary James Baker and former Democrat House leader Lee Hamiltion staged an attempted limited palace coup. The aim was to put management of the conflict in the hands of more moderates who would also put things to rights - in other words, someone who has half a clue about such things.

Well, it didn't work.

Look at the optics. Your ol' man and his buds think you're full of it. They try to take control of a policy. You blow them off and continue to bungle things.

How much worse could things get?

As for the rest of us on the continent, if we hadn't been so flabbergasted by what had been going on down there for the past five or six years, we'd have been flabbergasted.

Anyway, Bush pere and frere are backing Vietnam war hero and fellow navy pilot Sen. John McCain. Though a Republican, McCain is more Liberal than most others in his party, certainly the sitting president, though not necessarily the former President Bush.

It looks as though that side of the spectrum is settled.

On the centre left, or what passes for one down there, we have Democrat Barak Obama, who seems to be racking up support at the expense of former first lady Hillary Clinton.

Whoever takes the Democrat nomination, we're going to be watching an exciting time. It won't be a second summer of 1968 - there couldn't be such a thing in one lifetime, especially mine.

That trumps politics up here.