Frodo Baggins vs. Saruman

One such contest was played out in front of millions of American viewers last evening. Agreed you would like to be on the side of the meek but then experience and age (I will not call it wisdom but rather political savvy) were on the side of VP Dick Cheney last evening in the Vice Presidential debate. While personal injury lawyer and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Senator John Edwards was charming and all smiles throughout the show, he was outplayed by the wily old Vice President. Even when Senator Edwards had the facts on his side, VP Dick Cheney played all his age and experience cards and squashed what was definitely a much weaker challenge than the one put out by Senator Kerry in the Presidential debate last week. It was not as if Senator Edwards was not at his best. It was just that his best was not enough in a debate where facts were thrown out of the window (VP Dick Cheney said he never tried to connect Al Qaida and Iraq) and replaced by sharp and stinging attacks at each other and their respective Presidential running partners.

With two debates over and two more to go between the President and the Democratic candidate Senator Kerry, the focus and pressure will be intense. The first of the remaining debates takes place in a town hall like setup in Washington University, St.Loius, MO, where the audience will be allowed to ask questions. This should be interesting given that MO is a "swing state" which voted for President Bush in 2000 and President Clinton in 1996.

From an Indian perspective, the election is a unique one. While President Bush's reelection would definitely continue the outsourcing trend, so beneficial to the Indian software industry, idealogically, a war President who has time and again been proved that Iraq was a "mistake" is difficult to accept. Moreover, irrespective of how evil Saddam was, the fact that the flimsy and now totally untrue reasons provided for the Iraq war needs to be given a big thumbs down by the American voters. Today the weapons inspectors confirmed that Saddam was nowhere close to producing weapons of mass destruction. One thing to say about Indian politicans, however corrupt they maybe, succumb to political pressure within and from outside the party and resign after even a train accident. Given the large scale deaths, American and Iraqi, the so called perpetrators of a false war need to resign on moral grounds, now that it has been proved that their reasons were all wrong. This is one election that would once and for all demonstrate how forgiving the American public are, to such a costly (in terms of money and life) mistake. Come November, the opinion of America and its people will be on show to the rest of the world. Will be courageous enough to take a stand ?