FALL is typically a season of changing colours on the US East Coast. As winter approaches, shiny green leaves gradually turn into an arresting array of rust, brown, red, yellow and other colours, making the landscape breathtakingly beautiful.

This year, however, a much more radical change of colour is likely to take place inside the most coveted residence of the nation, the White House, where until half a century ago the only black inmates were the maids and bartenders of the presidential household.

The likelihood of Senator Barack Obama becoming the first non-white occupant of the White House has become almost a certainty after his spectacular success against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and Senator John McCain in the race for the presidency. Arguably, he faced far greater challenges in defeating Hillary Clinton in the primaries than in his yet undecided contest against Senator McCain.

At the start of the primary campaign, Mr Obama was an underdog and the victory of Senator Clinton was being taken for granted. She enjoyed almost unequivocal support of the Democratic establishment by virtue of being the first lady for eight years and having served two terms as a senator and she was also the icon of a vibrant feminist movement in the country. The gruelling primary contest which ended in April after Hillary — with unconcealed reluctance — conceded the nomination. It left Obama a little over six months to launch his presidential campaign, while his Republican rival, McCain, had sewed up his party’s nomination much earlier.

However, it was the primaries which helped shape Obama’s campaign for the presidency. He did not allow the wounds of the long and protracted primary campaign, with the often unsubtle use of race and gender as a weapon by partisans on both sides, to fester and made strenuous, if sometimes unrewarding, efforts to win over Hillary’s committed fans.

Mr McCain, however, was no walkover either. While his age and his close association with the Bush White House and its neocon policies had largely faded his maverick image and his Vietnam heroics, he retained the advantage of his prolonged experience invoking not only his own service to the military but also of “a long line of McCains who have served the country in war and in peace”.

In spite of these odds Obama has reached so close to the White House doors. It is because of his personal charisma and compelling biography of mixed ancestry and diverse cultures. The latter has, in fact, been an impediment in getting the support of American blacks, whose traditional leaders such as Rev Jesse Jackson felt alienated from him.

But Barack Obama, who entered active politics only a little over a decade ago, showed exemplary savvy by keeping the political and demographic arithmetic in mind to reach his political goal. His historic speech in Philadelphia in March splendidly finessed the issues of race, religion and colour raised in connection with his firebrand pastor Rev Wright and succeeded in linking the race issue with that of economic deprivation.

Fortunately for Obama, the tailwinds of economic and financial crises, stemming from the bursting of the housing bubble, which affected both the whites and blacks — perhaps more of the latter — helped to give the Obama campaign a windfall which McCain had not anticipated. Less than a week before the global financial crisis unravelled and Wall Street’s invincible icons started falling like dominos, Mr McCain was continuing to parrot that the ‘fundamentals’ of the economy were strong.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that the Bush administration, whose economic policies he had consistently supported but wanted to distance himself from, was launching a mammoth bailout plan to rescue the financial markets with the economy on the verge of a meltdown.

The strategy devised by McCain’s advisers to ignore the economy and focus on other issues such as Obama’s lack of experience, his questionable patriotism and ability to defend the country against a future 9/11, and innumerable other vulnerabilities, which Fox News and Rush Limbaugh incessantly regurgitated, had to be put on the back burner.

In a sudden U-turn, Mr McCain decided to become a populist and announced the suspension of his campaign. He went back to Washington to help solve the unfolding crisis, though ended up contributing nothing to the crisis or his campaign, except a lot of embarrassment, especially at the David Letterman show.

This was Mr McCain’s second gamble. Naming Sarah Palin as his running mate had already become grist for the comedy mill given Ms Palin’s inept handling of serious questions about the economy or foreign policy. Although Palin has been a larger crowd-puller than McCain, her crowds have not been dominated by Hillary supporters.

Despite his blundering campaign, it would be premature to say that Mr McCain’s electoral goose is cooked, much less to write his political obituary. Sarah Palin has resorted to the crudest tactics that a losing campaign can undertake, including smears. Besides spreading false rumours about Obama’s birth, nationality, patriotism and political associates, the McCain campaign is using incendiary ‘robocalls’ — phone calls where a machine delivers a message — linking Obama to terrorism, infanticide, and other charges.

Obama is now being described as a socialist, rather than a liberal, who believes in big government. It is ironic that it was the Bush administration — supported both by Obama and McCain — who ‘socialised’ many of the leading banks and financial institutions during the ongoing financial crisis. The McCain campaign is also launching an intimidating counter-campaign to discourage the recently registered black and young voters from exercising their franchise, as well as attempting to exclude those whose houses have been foreclosed.

If in spite of these heavy odds, Senator Obama does make it to the White House it will indeed mean crossing a historic rubicon. Changing the colour of the president will of course not change the colour of the country. Neither will it transform the US, as McCain is wont to warn, into a socialist republic. Nor will the wars started by Bush come to an end soon.

But there is certainly a hope shared by all that the US will learn from the political and economic fiascos it has landed the world in during the last decade and will turn a new leaf in its relations with both the developed and developing world.

As president Obama will hopefully be able to correct the flagrant policy mistakes of the Bush era and may be able to address the global issues whose urgent solution demands proactive and wise statesmanship, which his predecessor woefully lacked. n

syed.naseem@aya.yale.edu

SEVENTEEN Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantanamo Bay will be informed on Monday (Nov 3) that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.

No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations.

The men’s lawyer, Sabin Willett, wass flying to Guantanamo Bay last weekend to break the news to the men, who are members of the Uighur ethnic group seeking autonomy from China. In a blunt and angry letter to justice department lawyers, Willett spelled out what he thought of the way the men had been treated.

“After years of stalling and staying and appellate gamesmanship, you pleaded no contest — they are not enemy combatants,” Willett has written. “You have never charged them with any crime.”

Last month a federal judge ruled that the men should be freed. “They were on freedom’s doorstep,” said Willett. “The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran refugee services and the Uighur families and Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them.” However, the justice department appealed against the ruling and Willett claims this will put the men into a potentially endless limbo.

On Friday Willett said his clients were “saddened” by the latest events. The men, who are Muslims, were in Afghanistan in 2001 and were captured by Pakistani troops and handed over to the US. So far, more than 100 countries have been asked to take them as refugees but none have agreed. Willett blamed US authorities for incorrectly describing them as terrorists.

According to the US justice department, the men “are linked to an organisation that the state department has labelled to be a terrorist entity, and it is beside the point that the organisation is not ‘a threat to us’ because the law excluding members of such groups does not require such proof.”

Willett is also angry the defence department will not agree to let him meet his clients unless they are chained to the floor.

— The Guardian, London