An attentive reader of this blog may have noticed that the author has stopped writing regularly on the topic of the 2008 presidential campaign in America. This is mostly due to the fact that ‘The Russian Journal’, in its new format, has been less favorable to my column “Election Too” (http://www.russ.ru/temy/tozhe_vybory). The column, however, did play a role in understanding of what (and how) has been happening in the US in the last months. Accidentally, the campaign has also overlapped in time with the aggressive and hysterical efforts of the ruling diarchy [in Russia] towards the West in the conflict over the sovereignty of South Ossetia.

In just a few days America will elect a new president. I do not know who it will be. Not yet. Although I’ve been analyzing electoral maps, polls, figures and schemes, I still don’t have a clear picture and can’t unequivocally predict the winner. As any regular reader of this blog could have unmistakably concluded, my professional sympathies are with the figure of the black senator from Illinois. But I can’t tell for sure whether it will be him who moves to the White House to live and work next January.

I do not know how people in Virginia (13 electoral votes), Colorado (9), Michigan (17), Ohio (20) and Pennsylvania (21) will vote. Also questionable – at least for me – states are New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15) and Nevada (5). That’s why I am not taking chances to participate in an entertaining and somehow useful gambling event, organized by the “Electoral Geography 2.0. Mapped Politics” website (http://www.electoralgeography.com/new/en/category/countries/u/usa).

By referring to “my professional sympathies”, I only mean that for the post-Bush America, for the post-Putin Russia and for the post-crisis world order Barack Obama would be a better choice than John McCain. Explaining my thesis on favorability of Obama’s victory for the country where I was born and live can be difficult in a short blog posting.

I believe that in conditions of the growing global interdependency Russia will need an external factor to encourage domestic discussions about ways to its real modernization. This is a critical need, when the current tandem in power stands on the positions of anti-Western consolidation, rejecting political competition and independent institutions and keeping the civil society tamed. And the more “different” the next American leader will be, the more likely internal discussions in Russia are going to deal with the current issues and problems of Russia’s identity, the necessity of its own integration project and Russia’s unique alignment of values, norms and interests.

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