Well yes the American presidential election campaign has reached its own little orgasmic status in the eyes of the Indian media. So it is news even here at home that Obama accidentally kissed his Vice Presidential candidate's wife or that the Republican Mccain chose a rather good looking female whose daughter is a teenage mother, as his VP candidate.
The sheer enormity of the electoral process in the USA is astounding. Not only does each democrat or republic candidate campaign in every state, the entire procedure is repeated on an even larger scale come November during the presidential election. It simply means that the candidates there evoke enormous public reaction all over the country, consequently the candidate eventually chosen becomes a representative of the people just because of this gigantic process.
Compare this to the stark contrast in India where regional politics matters more. The party in power possibly gets in with only 30%of the national vote which comprises of only 60% of the national population.
The question is will India ever have a candidate for the PMO who is young and dynamic like Obama (love saying that name Osama, gives a real kick everytime)or even good enough to hold a crowd's attention with his oratory skills at the age of 72 like Mccain. The answer is that we have politicians like that but the chances are that he or she will never be the PM candidate.The fact is that youth fullness at its splendid best, in Omar Abdullah or Rahul Gandhi is just not enough to deal with coalitions, left fronts and regional partisan politics.
Sure the "I am an Indian and a Muslim and I see no difference between the two...." speech by Omar was quite frankly one of the best I have ever heard. But where is his Locus stand ii in the larger scheme of things, relegated to kashmir (even here is only a small part of the picture dominated by the Hurriyat). Rahul Gandhi can rant and rave about widows and underprivileged women in remote villages but yet he wont evoke the same response as an Obama does when he talks about Change. The same goes for the capable politicians like Jai Panda, Milind Deora or Sachin Pilot and the likes.
In reality the only politician who might come close to being a seasoned campaigner and yet being charismatic enough to captivate an audience spanning from Kashmir to Kanyakumari (I wanted to use this cliche' for a long time), is Mayawati. Now the question remains is if she can transform from a regional entity to a a national one. If yes, then we have an answer to Obama, our very own Obami!!!
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