If they both vote the same way this retired couple might just help decide who will be the next

If they both vote the same way, this retired couple might just help decide who will be the next president. Nasa has announced plans to launch the first manned space mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
The next shuttle flight is to take place in May 2005 following a series of delays because of damage caused by hurricanes. The prospect frightens even the most hard-edged operators ­ a repeat of the 2000 fiasco only involving not one but several states, where lawyers take over.Once again, America ­ so quick to extol the virtues of democracy to others ­ would have failed to make its own democracy work. His economic record has not been disastrous, visibly at least. Despite the mess in Iraq, he still enjoys a handsome lead over his opponent when it comes to the most important issue: who best can keep the country safe? Events in Iraq, however, and above all the President’s obstinate refusal to admit the slightest error, have called into question his experience and judgement, the same doubts which nagged his candidacy in 2000.Even so, today may produce no clear verdict. Conceivably, Mr Bush will be the victim, not the beneficiary of the eccentricities of electoral college ­ the winner of the popular vote but loser in enough swing states to hand victory to Mr Kerry.. If the world awaits this vote with trepidation, so too do many thoughtful Americans.

Please, they say, let there be a clear-cut winner.Some believe that, in the final hours, the race will break one way or the other. Unlike four years ago, the disappointed party might be less inclined to accept a judgment from the Supreme Court, divided like the population at large. The higher the turnout, runs the conventional wisdom, the better for the Democrat. But conventional wisdom forgets this is the first election since 1972 fought during a time of war, the first to take place after global terrorism has struck on America’s own soil.But for Iraq, Mr Bush would be all but certain of re-election. The new president will shape the balance of the court for a generation, and hugely influence the social battles ­ on religion, gay marriage, gun control, abortion and so on ­ that so exercise Americans in this era of permanent cultural war. This president’s juridical legacy may outlive his term in office for decades.But today, Americans and foreigners alike can only wait.

Meanwhile the word “deficit” does not trip from Mr Bush’s lips, even though unless something is done soon, America’s system of social security and entitlements faces disaster when baby-boomers retire.Unmentioned as well is the near certainty that whoever wins is likely to be called upon to nominate two, perhaps three, Supreme Court justices. The other conflict between Israel and Palestinians, which colours everything in the Middle East, has been passed over in near total silence.But even if the terrorist attacks of 11 September had never happened, this would still be an election of immense domestic importance. The Democrat has been almost as culpable, talking of the disappearance of 400 tons of explosives from a weapons dump near Baghdad as if it were the most important single event in Iraq in the past 18 months. Yet, despite the attention lavished on them by the candidates, those topics, of such concern to the rest of us, have scarcely been discussed on the campaign trail.”Rip Van Winkle America,” the wise Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland wrote at the weekend, of a country embroiled in an election in which the two candidates, skirting around what was really happening in the rest of the world, have either reduced those issues to caricature, or not mentioned them at all.Listen to Mr Bush, and you would believe John Kerry’s first act in office would be to negotiate a ceasefire with Osama bin Laden, and his second to put Jacques Chirac in charge of the Pentagon. One need look no further than the abuse and ridicule unleashed by The Guardian newspaper’s “Operation Clark County”, in which British readers were invited to advise the citizens of a swing area of a swing state on how they should take into account the views of their concerned British counterparts and ditch Mr Bush.