Africa looks at world politics

Star - All set for year of riveting politics

American voters go to the polls in November and the outcome will to a large extent shape our world. The US is the only superpower left standing, and under Mr Bush it has decided to be the world's assertive policeman as well.

O'Neill likens Bush's cabinet meetings to "a blind man in a room full of deaf people". Ronald Reagan was known to take a good nap at cabinet meetings. And decisions wouldn't be taken until his wife, Nancy, had consulted her astrologer in California. Bush is in good company.

But unlike his father, the mood of the American voter right now suits Bush.

Iraq is a winner for him. Saddam's capture is the icing on the cake. The American public is - to borrow from Tony Leon's arsenal - gatvol. Their fiery mood right now is to lash out, and they don't care who catches the flak. Somebody - anybody - has to pay for September 11. They have the might to give anybody a good going-over.

When Bush says, "you're either with us or against us", he knows and everybody knows, he has the military power to back up such a mantra. If Iraq stays relatively quiet and the economy emerges from its trough, Bush should not have a problem seeing off the opposition. But too many balls are still up in the air right now. Many people around the world will pray he trips up, because another term of Bush at the helm is just too ghastly to contemplate.

el - American politics are world politics now.