They say that if you found two Irishman chained up in a south American prison, starving, flea-bitten, naked, burned by their guards’ cigarettes, they’d still make time to find two flies on the wall and to bet on which one would make it out the window first. We’re a bettin’ people sor.

They also say that upper crust British travellers in Ireland in the 19th century were regularly astounded to meet peasants who could not only speak Latin and Greek but also discourse on current events in lands many thousands of kilometres away. Wild curious and fierce knowledgeable, we are to be sure.
And there’s one quadrennial contest that blends these two national traits better than any other. It’s not the Olympics! It’s not the Euros, nor the Coup du Monde! It’s the American presidential election and as we speak, the game is afoot.
Even the first weeks of actual competition have been hair-raising. And these are just the appetisers!
At face value, it’s there for the Democrats to lose. Rarely has a party been so out of favour as the Republicans, dragged down as they are by the weight of the current president, a man more unpopular than Richard Nixon, a whole generation ago.
And the Democrats have some very strong candidates, John Edwards, who’s been there or thereabouts before and the two main contenders, Barack Obama (or O’Bama as he is known in the midlands where an ancestor was born) and Hillary Clinton.
As you know, O’Bama Lama Lama-Loo won Idaho and was regarded as such a shoe-in for New Hampshire that Paddy Power actually paid out on him to become the Democrat candidate! Oh dear, egg-on-face!
Tables are turned now and Hillary is a slight favourite in her own right, firstly on the back of her display of emotion in the days before the NH vote and secondly as a result of her comeback. Whoever wins, there’s a new game on. Either a woman’s going for president or an African-American. And both are promising change.
It ain’t over by a long shot, but at this distance I’d say Hill’n’Bill will shade it.
It’s all very different for the Republicans. One guy wins here and another wins there. All will be a lot more clear on February 5. Early votes have given us different winners, Rudy Giuliani hasn’t even got his motor running yet and Michael Bloomberg hasn’t even declared.
They’re harder to call. To understand what’s actually happening you have to go back to 1980 when Ronald Reagan put together a package that united three very different groups, social and religious conservatives, defence conservatives and anti-tax conservatives.
The various Republican candidates represent these different strands and show no compunction about having a go at one another which suggests that the Reagan ‘coalition’ is coming apart at the seams.
This is all happening at a time when the incumbent President is exceptionally unpopular, is waging a war overseas that is becoming far too like the Vietnam war for voters’ comfort and furthermore seems intent on starting yet another wild adventure in Iran.
Meanwhile, the US economy is at the low end of a cycle and is now close to recession thanks to the banditry of the sub-prime mortgage sector, a buccaneering wing of the financial services industry that is closest to the Republicans’ way of doing business but that, as we enter the ’80s revival, smells far too much of Gordon Gekko for an anxious population contemplating hard times as they come again once more.
When you add them all together, it doesn’t look good for the Republicans. But it’s early days yet and since Nixon’s time the Republicans have been adept at dirty tricks and nasty spins and at twisting and turning and distorting. Believe me, not a sin will go unmentioned, not a stain will be unrevealed. Those with sin will cast the first stone and the second and the third and the fourth and they’ll keep casting till the very last vote is counted.
Even then, as we saw in Florida in 2000, they might find a way to nick it. Don’t count them out.
And it’s important. The person who is elected will inherit a demoralised country on the verge of recession and stagnation. There’s also every chance that, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, s/he will also have been committed to another unwinnable war, this time in Iran. And that’s before we even mention the modest emissions targets recently set in Bali but which, before the ink was even dry, Bush’s government was repudiating.
Its politics may be far to the right of even ours, but America still matters. It was once thought of as humanity’s last great hope. Maybe not now, but still, the world needs America’s economy to fire on all cylinders even as it also needs America to cut back on the gas. And let’s not forget the central place that American culture and technology has in the world. What happens there affects every bleedin’ one of us, every hour of the day.
There’s a year to go. The race is on! Place your bets and may the divil take the hindmost!