AMERICA: With only a week to go and the polls showing the race neck-and-neck, Democrats are getting excited about the coming entry of Bill Clinton into the campaign, writes Conor O'Clery.
On Monday the former president will make his first public appearance since his heart surgery last month. He and John Kerry will address a rally in Philadelphia's Love Park to try and further energise the Democratic base in Pennsylvania.
It will be a real love-in in Love Park. Each man needs the other. Kerry needs to nail down Pennsylvania to win the election and Clinton's enormous appeal with likely Democratic voters will help.
President George Bush has made this state ground zero in his re-election fight. He has visited Pennsylvania more times than his ranch at Crawford Texas since taking office and campaigned there yesterday for the second day in succession. But Clinton has more than a passing or party interest in helping a Democratic victory.
John Kerry in the White House would open up an intriguing vista for the 56-year-old former president. Clinton has set his sights on becoming the next UN Secretary General when Kofi Annan's term expires in 2006, according to a Clinton insider quoted by the United Press International news service. This would boost the flagging prestige of the world body and would be supported enthusiastically by most nations, though it is Asia's turn for the post.
But for Clinton to become the first American to head the UN he would need the approval of the US president, and Bush is most unlikely to entertain such a notion. Kerry would find it more difficult to resist the idea, and if elected would be under pressure to find some major outlet for the talents and energy of the man from Arkansas.
Kerry has already said publicly that he would consider Bill Clinton for a top diplomatic post such as envoy to the Middle East. Clinton spent much of the last four years writing his book, My Life, which has sold nearly two million copies, and with the heart surgery behind him, he is ready for something new.
Some conspiracy theorists still say the Clintons wouldn't mind seeing Kerry defeated so that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton could emerge triumphant as the Democratic choice for President in 2008. But Bill Clinton would seem to have a lot to gain by helping to get Kerry into the White House, rather than spending the next four years wondering what to do with himself.
Wednesday night's baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees has become a metaphor for the come-from-behind candidacy of Kerry. At least that's how the Democratic campaign would like to see it.
Against all the odds, the Red Sox trounced the Yankees on their home turf, breaking a curse that kept them out of the World Series final since 1918. The jinx was said to have been caused by the Red Sox's decision back then to sell Babe Ruth to their bitter New York rivals.
Kerry has always associated himself with the titanic struggle of his home-town team, which came from three down this week to beat the Yankees 4-3 - a result considered as unlikely as, say, a Massachusetts liberal winning the White House in post-9/11 America. In one of his debates with Bush, Kerry said: "The President, I don't think, is living in a world of reality with respect to the environment. Now, if you're a Red Sox fan, that's okay. But if you're a president, it's not."
The Democrats are also taking heart from the defeat on Thursday by the St Louis Cardinals of the other semi-finalist team, the Houston Astros, whose star pitcher, Roger Clemens, is a big Bush supporter. It's not hard to guess which teams the candidates will be supporting when the Red Sox and Cardinals begin their seven-game final this weekend.
Kerry threw the first pitch for the Red Sox-Yankees game in Boston in July and will be rooting for the Boston underdogs. Bush will be cheering on the Cardinals, for whom he threw the first pitch at their opening game in St Louis in the spring. On Wednesday night Kerry sent for the cameras to show himself relaxing on a couch, Budweiser bottle in hand, as he watched the Red Sox triumph on television. This helped dress up his "guy" image which he needs to improve to combat Bush's lead among male voters. He staged another photo-op when next morning he went goose-hunting in camouflage gear in Ohio.
The Bush-Cheney campaign issued a statement reminding voters of Kerry's sporting blunders, such as when he referred to a Red Sox player as "Manny Ortiz", mixing up Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, to make the case that he is only posing as a sports fan.
John Kerry's mention, during his final debate with President Bush in Arizona, of the fact that Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is a lesbian did not go down well with most voters - in one poll 64 per cent thought it was inappropriate. It came in response to a question put to both candidates about whether lesbians and gays are born that way or choose their lifestyles (Bush said he didn't know and Kerry said it was not a matter of choice). "Outing" Mary Cheney was seen as intruding on the privacy of the Vice President's family, and drew an angry response from Mary's mother, Lynn Cheney. It was "a cheap and tawdry political trick" by someone who "is not a good man", she said.
Conservative radio hosts, in rare support of a gay person, accused Kerry of picking on Mary Cheney and expressed sympathy for the Cheney family. Democrats pointed out that it was Dick Cheney who first mentioned publicly at a campaign rally in the summer that he had a "gay daughter".
In fact Mary Cheney, who runs his campaign office, has openly proclaimed her orientation for years. She and her long-time partner, Heather Poe, were together at the Republican Convention (though they didn't join the happy Cheney family tableau on stage at the end).
She is in a difficult position, having to survive in a party which is so against the homosexual agenda that the Log Cabin (gay and lesbian) Republicans refused to endorse President Bush for re-election. In the 1990s Mary Cheney was employed by Coors brewing company specifically to counter a gay boycott over the beer-makers' earlier funding of anti-gay causes.
The Cheneys did not object publicly when during the Republican Convention the Republican Senate candidate for Illinois, Alan Keyes, said in an interview that Mary Cheney was a "selfish hedonist" for following the lifestyle she does. Nor have the Cheneys "voiced objections to a single right-wing piece of homophobia in this campaign", noted gay conservative analyst Andrew Sullivan on his website. Dick Cheney, commenting on the incident in the debate, said that Kerry "will say and do anything in order to get elected".
If Kerry gets elected he should stay clear of the President's mother Barbara Bush. She is so furious with the Democratic candidate for his attacks on her son "he's going to need another Purple Heart" if she gets her hands on him. So said George H. W. Bush, the President's father, at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in New York on Thursday.