Fareed Zakaria speaks with former U.S. President Bill Clinton about Barack Obama’s chances of winning the presidential election in November. To watch the full interview, tune into GPS this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET.
If you look at the numbers, Obama is now leading in pretty much all of the swing states. And if you've seen these polls that are reasonably accurate, it could translate into an electoral landslide. Do you think that's possible?
It’s possible. But we still don't know who's going to vote. You know, he won an enormous victory among people under 30. But they are disproportionately likely now to be unemployed or stuck in part-time jobs, to be frustrated.
I think for all kinds of reasons, they’re unlikely to vote in large numbers for Governor Romney, but will they vote?
How much will the vote be lessened or reduced by the fact that in Florida, except for four counties, the pre-election voting, the advanced voting, has been cut down to eight days and doesn’t include the Sunday before the election, which is an arrow aimed straight at the heart of the African-American churches, who pull up the church buses on the Sunday before the election and take elderly people who have no cars or people who are disabled to the polls so they can vote?
In less than two weeks, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney will square off in the first of a series of presidential debates that will include foreign policy. But who should they be drawing their inspiration from? And whose examples should they be avoiding?
Global Public Square asked a group of historians and commentators for their take on the most successful and least successful U.S. presidents, from a foreign policy point of view. Yesterday, we looked at the best. Today we are looking at the least successful. (All views expressed here are, of course, the writers' own.)
In less than two weeks, President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney will square off in the first of a series of presidential debates that will include foreign policy. But who should they be drawing their inspiration from? And whose examples should they be avoiding?
Global Public Square asked a group of historians and commentators for their take on the most successful and least successful U.S. presidents, from a foreign policy point of view. Here, we feature their picks of the best, and on Friday, we'll highlight those considered the least successful. (All views expressed here are, of course, the writers' own.) Agree or disagree? Share your thoughts in the comments. FULL POST
By Marshall Fitz, Special to CNN
Marshall Fitz is the director of immigration policy at American Progress Action Fund. The views expressed are his own.
Even before Hurricane Isaac forced the reconfiguration of the Republican Party convention, party leaders were scrambling to confront a looming storm surge: The demographic wave rapidly reshaping the national electorate. Hispanics are the fastest growing group of voters in the United States and they will soon make up the majority of new voters in battleground states. Party influentials like Florida Governor Jeb Bush have started to sound the alarm, calling his party’s posture towards Latinos “stupid.”
But national polling shows Governor Mitt Romney on course to earn an even smaller share of this growing group of voters than the last GOP candidate, John McCain. A tracking poll released this week reveals Mitt Romney trailing President Barack Obama 26 percent to 65 percent among Latino registered voters. If Romney wants to close that gap, he’s going to need a better position on immigration than the recently released Republican Party platform, which adopts the most extreme measures.
By Bruce Stokes, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Bruce Stokes is the director of Global Economic Attitudes at the Pew Research Center. Full survey results are available here. The views expressed are his own.
At the Republican National Convention scheduled to take place this week and the Democratic National Convention beginning September 3, Americans will notionally be choosing their candidates for president of the United States. Effectively they will be deciding who will be the leader of the world for the next four years.
The world’s citizens get no say in this choice. Nevertheless, people outside the United States have definite opinions about Obama and some of the key issues in the campaign: about the state of the economy and what to do about it, climate change and how they think Washington should treat them.
Editor's note: Andrew Selee is director of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, which promotes dialogue and understanding between the United States and Mexico. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Andrew Selee.
By Andrew Selee, Special to CNN
Mexico's elections have brought back the PRI, an authoritarian party that ruled Mexico for seven decades. This possibility had worried many observers and politicians in the United States, and yet, surprisingly, it will make little difference for the U.S.-Mexico relationship. This is largely a tribute to how deeply interdependent the two countries are today, as well as the ways in which Mexican society has evolved over the past two decades.
The PRI has been known in the past for its anti-American rhetoric and distrust of the United States. However, circumstances over the past 20 years have completely changed the relationship between the two countries. FULL POST
Editor's note: Robert A. Pastor is professor and co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University and author of "The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future." The views expressed in this article are solely those of Robert A. Pastor.
By Robert A. Pastor, Special to CNN
The main question asked about the Mexican presidential elections on July 1 is whether victory by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) means that Mexico will return to its authoritarian past.
The answer is simple: The PRI has changed because Mexico has changed. For more than six decades, the PRI manipulated elections and ruled Mexico in a quasi-authoritarian system. However, between 1988 until 2000, two Mexican presidents – Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Ernesto Zedillo – gradually responded to internal and external pressures and opened the economy and the political system.
I have observed elections in Mexico since 1986 and witnessed the transformation of the election system from the worst to the best in the Americas. The projected victory by PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto will not turn Mexico backwards. Mexicans have chosen democracy, and after two terms under PAN presidents, they are voting for change.
Indeed, in this year when the United States is engaged in a ferocious campaign for the presidency, the question that ought to be asked is: How does the U.S. electoral system compare to Mexico's? I undertook a comprehensive study of the electoral systems in North America, and the good news is that the United States came in third. The bad news is that there are only three countries in North America. FULL POST
By Fareed Zakaria
This past week, Los Cabos, Mexico, was quite literally turned into a global public square. Leaders from 19 top economies plus the European Union gathered to discuss the world's major crises: the euro, global growth, Syria. But the G-20 summit, as it's called, also shed light on a few crucial relationships.
Take the U.S. and Russia, for example. Much was made of how Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin leaned away from each other during talks. Commentators said it felt as chilly as a Moscow winter. Contrast that with Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao: a warm handshake and big smiles.
But the meeting that really got me thinking was the one between two Latin American leaders: Mexico's Felipe Calderon and Brazil's Dilma Roussef.
Why? FULL POST
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Editor’s note: Khairi Abaza is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and he is also a former senior official in Egypt’s secular liberal Wafd party. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Khairi Abaza.
By Khairi Abaza, Special to CNN
Egypt’s historic presidential election will not settle the future of the country in one fell swoop, but it traces the contours of a new regime in which the key political actors may ultimately be forced to compromise with one another.
Though Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi was named president-elect Sunday, in a sense it doesn't matter whether he won or lost the runoff to Ahmed Shafiq, who served as prime minister in former dictator Hosni Mubarak’s final hours. After 15 months, neither the military nor the Muslim Brotherhood has the wherewithal to grind the other out of existence.
By Kyle Almond, CNN
Egypt’s presidential race is headed for a runoff, but the two remaining candidates present voters with a serious dilemma, according to some analysts.
Sonya Farid, writing for Al Arabiya, said the two candidates who reached the runoff — Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik — are the most non-revolutionary of all the candidates and represent “two typically tyrannical institutions: the first (Morsi) being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the second (Shafik) a senior official of the former regime.”
Shafik was the last prime minister of former President Hosni Mubarak, who was forced out by protests in February 2011. Shafik received 5.5 million of the country’s 23 million votes, about 200,000 votes behind first-place finisher Morsi, who leads the Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Voters must now choose between “a return to the old corrupt tyrannical regime or a complete transformation into a seemingly unfavorable scenario that would give the (Muslim) Brotherhood a trifecta of both parliamentary houses and the presidency,” wrote Adel Iskandar, a columnist for the Egypt Independent.
Egyptian voters will be casting their ballots Wednesday and Thursday in the country’s first free presidential election.
There are 12 candidates looking to fill the vacancy left by Hosni Mubarak, who was forced out in February 2011. Since then, the Egyptian military has been in charge of the country.
Here’s a closer look at the leading contenders:
FULL POST
By Fareed Zakaria
If you look at Egypt moving forward, there's a great deal of emphasis placed on the various political parties and what they may stand for and what they're going to do. But we have to remember: The real obstacle to democracy in Egypt continues to be the people who run Egypt — a military dictatorship. FULL POST
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