While its true not everyone was happy with the way the 2008 Democratic Convention shaped up, the organizers of the event and party leaders must be breathing a huge sigh of relief having seemingly achieved most of their aims in Denver.

Firstly the undeniable warmth of Michelle Obama's opening night address interwove fluently and convincingly her family's story and that of her husband in a speech that will go a long way towards dispelling voters' doubts about her. She has been the focus of unfair criticism concerning her patriotism and commitment, but largely overcame this in a confident display dispelling organisers' fears that choosing her as the opening speaker was a risk.

Next came the crucial uniting speech from Hillary Clinton. Her performance, which has been likened to being the ex-fiancee forced to toast the blushing bride at a wedding, was sublime and healed much of the bitter division between the Clinton and Obama camps, left over from the bruising nomination battle.

Though some reporters detected a certain hesitancy in outlining the quality of an Obama presidency, she called on her supporters to rally behind Obama, a uniting effort that every Democrat was hoping she'd make and vital to Obama's election chances.

An awkward-looking Bill Clinton completed the Clinton acquiesence by comparing the inexperienced Obama to another inexperienced contender in 1992 - himself. Though increasingly overshadowed by Hillary these days, and Denver was no exception, the former president still commands enormous clout amongst the faithful.

However Hillary Clinton's role was not confined to the unity speech when, in a dramatic moment from the floor representing the New York delegation, she stopped the state-by-state count and proposed Obama's name be read as the Democratic nominee - an electrifying and uniting moment for Democrats.

The theatre of the moment is expertly described by Justin Webb, the BBC's America blogger.

And then there was the historic Obama acceptance speech, the first time a black person has been nominated from a major party for president of the United States.

After accepting the nomination "with humility" Obama finally did two things which will please many of his supporters and potential voters. He took the gloves off against McCain and set out an agenda for his "change" programme.

Likening a McCain administration to four more years of a Bush administration, Obama obliquely referred to the Arizona senator's famous temper when he said he had the better temperament and judgement to be commander-in-chief than McCain. After weeks of being the subject of negative attacks from the McCain camp, is this a sign the Obama camp will flick the switch to attack mode?

In another "gloves off" line against the doughty Republican nominee, Obama said "John McCain says he'd follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives."

Setting out his agenda for an Obama administration - the first time he has fleshed out his somewhat nebulous "change" programme - the Democratic nominee placed affordable health care, tax cuts for ninety-five of the population, a commitment to renewable energy and the environment at the top of the agenda.

Forty-five years to the day since Dr Martin Luther King's famous speech, was it my imagination or did Obama deliberately adopt the speaking style of Dr King when he spoke of the promise that had brought people from all over America on that day in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.?

The speech though was not a Dr King-style speech of soaring rhetoric that Americans have become used to from Obama, but more a matter-of-fact nuts and bolts address, notice perhaps that the election is only nine weeks away. 

With the Republican Convention due in the Twin Cities due next week, McCain knows he needs to hit back, and hit back hard. He has relied, with some success, on negative attack ads in recent times to bring him level pegging in the polls with Obama however he knows he much achieve a number of things himself at the Republican Convention.

Firstly his running mate (due to be announced this week) must make a good impression as Joe Biden has done for Obama. Then he must convince delegates that he is a "maverick" Republican and not beholden to the Bush administration.

And if that isn't enough, he must unify his own party of conservatives and the religious right with his moderate tendencies and set an agenda of his own that will be acceptable to middle America.

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Just days before the Democratic Convention in Denver gets underway, Barack Obama has bitten the bullet and selected Joe Biden, the six-term senator from Delaware, as his running mate. The selection of the 65-year-old Biden ends weeks of speculation over the number two spot on the ticket and confirmed there is no place for Hillary Clinton.

The likeable Biden brings to the ticket a wealth of experience, especially in foreign policy in his current capacity as chairman of the influential Foreign Relations Committee. However more important to Obama's presidential ambitions, he has broad white working-class voter appeal. It also does not hurt that Biden was born in Pennyslvania, a vital swing state.

In selecting Biden, Obama has signaled clearly what this week's Democratic National Convention will be about: He intends to move aggressively to ease the problems that have worried so many Democrats in recent weeks -- problems, it turns out, that Obama is worried about, too.

One of them concerns the limits of Obama's appeal to the white working class. Biden's unveiling was one long ode to line workers, cops and firefighters, to hard work and struggling families, to shuttered steel mills and lost manufacturing jobs. [source]

Overseas the reaction has been generally muted, though supportive. The Financial Times has described Biden as a safe pair of hands with the message to voters that he will be a moderating influence on the Democratic campaign.

Mr Biden is a decades-in-Congress senator from Delaware, a reliably Democratic state, and one of the best-known politicians in the US. He brings no electoral-college dowry, and injects no great surge of excitement into the race. He signals instead a moderate course adjustment, and bolsters the Obama candidacy where it most needs support.[source]

So was the choice of Biden an attempt to shore up Obama's vote in areas where he is vulnerable? The Illinois senator, at one stage leading steadily in the opinion polls, has slipped in recent weeks in the aftermath of the Georgian crisis giving Republican McCain a slender advantage. Though other factors may have been involved, many pundits are positing that Americans took another look at the inexperienced senator in the wake of renewed Russian aggression in the Caucasus and didn't like what they saw.

Obama's seemingly more cautious and diplomatic tone contrasted with McCain's clever and opportunist sabre-rattling against old foe Russia which appears to have hit a chord with voters. The selection of the experienced and mature Biden seems to have been made partly to offset McCain's perceived advantages in these areas. His broad appeal to working-class white voters, whose support is essential if Obama is to become president, may also neutralise the losses Obama will make by not selecting Hillary Clinton as running mate.

But is the selection of Biden an admission that the inexperienced Obama is not ready to be president, as contended by the McCain camp? Though Biden brings a lot of positive qualities to the ticket, his selection does seem to be made for the wrong reasons -- to plug leaking holes in the Obama campaign. There are also some risks associated with the Biden nomination, how his Catholicism will play in the wider voting community and the fact that the country's south is not represented on the ticket.

With all the colour and movement of the fair (Democratic Convention) about to get underway, expect Obama/Biden to throw the switch to "it's the economy stupid" and concentrate more on the economy and those vital but elusive white, working class voters.

For a taster, here's an excerpt of Biden's acceptance speech:

"Your kitchen table's like mine," Biden said. "You sit there at night, after you put the kids to bed, and you talk. You talk about what you need. You talk about how much you're worried about being able to pay the bills. But ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience -- he'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at...He [McCain] served our country with extraordinary courage, and I know he wants to do right by America," Biden said of McCain. "But the hard truth is ... you can't change America when you supported George Bush's policies 95 percent of the time." [source]

Your thoughts?

Image top: Senator Joe Biden. Credit: U.S. Congress

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Pakistan's former leader Pervez Musharraf resigned yesterday in an emotional address to the nation ahead of impeachment proceedings brought by the country's newly-resurgent Parliament. Musharraf dominated Pakistani politics for almost a decade and strode the world stage as one of the U.S.'s chief regional allies in the war against terrorism. However the euphoria expressed at the ousting of the one time strongman was tempered with the knowledge that Islamabad is likely to face a protracted power struggle to fill the vacuum.

Musharraf's ascendancy was the catalyst that brought together the two main parties; the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), though the two have traditionally been rivals throughout the country's history. With the chief reason for the parties' awkward and fragile coalition now gone, the country could face an uncertain, if not violent, political future.

The record of the two parties coalition since obtaining office in February is mixed and there have been squabbles over key issues such as immunity for Musharraf and the vexing question of whether to reinstate the judges ousted by Musharraf, an act which proved to be the tipping point for Musharraf in the eyes of the Pakistani public.

Now despite an apparent agreement between coalition leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif that all judges would be reinstated within 72 hours, this looks again to be on shaky ground as Zardari looked today to be backing away from the deal. Chief among points of contention seems to be whether or not the independent-minded judiciary will look to open an investigation into past corruption allegations against the leaders of the coalition.

These are not the only points of difference between Zardari and and Sharif though. Musharraf leaves two damning legacies: a militant Islamist movement gaining in popularity and a failing economy. Since the coalition's election in February, significant difference in ideology in how to deal with these problems have emerged.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald's Matt Wade, reporting from Lahore, little progress has been made by the new Government on either of these fronts.

There are significant ideological differences between the two parties on how to tackle Pakistan's two biggest challenges: combating militancy and managing the economy.

One of the reasons for the collapse of Musharraf's reputation was a failing economy, battered by capital flight, rapidly falling foreign-exchange reserves and soaring inflation, now at 21 per cent. People struggle to pay for flour and fuel. The entire country suffers from prolonged power failures, which, according to the International Monetary Fund, can be attributed largely to the failure of the Musharraf government to build power plants.

The new Government has made no major policy response either to this deepening economic crisis or the country's security problems. [source]

As if to underline the simmering problems facing the administration, a bomb ripped through a hospital in the north-western Pakistani town of Peshawar killing twenty-three people just hours after Musharraf's resignation. The region has seen prolonged sectarian violence. Agence France-Presse reports a provincial police spokesman Riaz Ahmad as saying, "It is not clear if the blast was a suicide attack."

Thus far the leadership of Pakistan's military has behaved impeccably, at least to Western eyes, promising to stay out of politics and uphold the democratic decision of the people in February. However history has shown that Pakistan's military has not been shy in coming forward to "save" Pakistan in times of political upheaval. The last such coup was in October 1999 when Musharraf led a bloodless takeover from the elected corruption-riddled government of Nawaz Sharif. Musharraf became the fourth Army chief of Pakistan to have assumed executive control.

As the road ahead for the governing coalition appears fraught with ideological potholes, the White House is concerned that Islamabad's war on Al-Qaeda and the recently resurgent Taliban could be compromised.

With anti-Americanism on the rise in the country, both Sharif and Zardari may look to loosen ties with the United States, in order to maintain popularity with the Pakistani people. If the struggle between the parties does indeed turn violent, and more pointedly, if the Islamist parties in Pakistan were to take  advantage of the split to take control of the country, will the U.S. administration support the Pakistani military in yet another coup? The fact that Pakistan has been a confirmed nuclear power since 1998, the year before Musharraf's coup, adds a dangerously potent factor into the Pakistani political cauldron.

The White House has thanked Musharraf for his support during the Bush years and his alliance in the war on terror though many inside the administration have quietly claimed over the years that he was playing both sides against each other, allegedly harbouring Al-Qaeda militants on Pakistani territory or not doing enough to pursue them. Musharraf's tactics were on the one hand to persuade the Bush administration that he was a loyal ally against such Islamist organisations such as Al-Qaeda while placating his own internal fundamentalist Islamists who accused him of being too pro-West. Musharraf had already escaped a number of assassination attempts at the hands of Islamist supporters.

His final place of retirement is unclear with some reports suggesting he will be exiled to either Saudi Arabia or the USA. With his penchant for whiskey and the company of woman, one would think he would be suited to a retirement home in the United States.

Granny flat at the Crawford Ranch perhaps?

Image top: Pakistan flag. Image right: Former President Pervez Musharraf. Credit: Agencia Brasil.

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Recriminations and accusations are continuing following the announcement of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's decision to call off his military's advance into Georgia, ending a brutal five-day war initiated when Georgian forces responded to intimidation and invaded the would-be breakaway republic of South Ossetia.

"The security of our peacekeepers and civilians has been restored,'' Mr Medvedev said on national television. "The aggressor has been punished and suffered very significant losses. Its military has been disorganised.'' [source]

Even before President Medvedev claimed all Russia's military objectives had been met, it was obvious both he and former President, now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin had emerged victorious from the brief but devastating war. Indeed it was Putin who returned from the Beijing Olympics early to sympathise with South Ossetian victims, lambast the United States and accuse Georgian forces of "genocide".

"People are in a difficult situation, especially old people, children and women. They have seen a lot of suffering. I would like to draw your attention, Mr President, to elements of genocide against South Ossetian people" [source]

Recent attacks by Georgian forces against South Ossetian separatists dramatically escalated over the weekend as Russian forces entered the fray on the side of the rebels. Latest reports say Georgian troops have now left South Ossetian territory, a claim denied by Georgian military sources however Russian forces have refused calls for a cease fire and have broadened the conflict inside Georgia.

Georgian forces have completely withdrawn from Tskhinvali, the Russian military said Sunday, thereby confirming earlier accounts by Georgia that its forces had withdrawn from the city. But Tbilisi denied that its forces had completely pulled out of South Ossetia. [source]

Accusing Georgia of genocide against the breakaway republic, Russia has used the opportunity to pound the Georgian cities of Poti, Kutaisi and Gori along with the levelling of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali.The attack has been the worst military engagement since the invasion by the former Soviet Union of Afghanistan in 1979.

Both sides are blaming each other for continuing attacks with Georgia saying targets have been hit by Russian forces in and around the capital Tbilisi, the BBC reports.

Socialite and heiress Paris Hilton has hit out at Sen. John McCain's commercial last week which likened the celebrity's alleged lack of substance to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. The commercial's theme was "Is He Ready To Lead?" and sneakily juxtaposed Hilton and pop icon Britney Spears with the Illinois Senator to reinforce its point of Obama's lack of experience.

In a spoof advertisement of her own Ms Hilton cheekily accepts the endorsement from the "white-haired dude" (McCain) and informs America that she is ready to serve because she is "hot".

Wearing nothing but a bikini and her famous half smile Ms Hilton pitches to the camera that she is also a celebrity.

Hey America, I'm Paris Hilton and I'm a celebrity too. Only I'm not from the olden days and I'm not promising change like that other guy. I'm just hot. [source]

Sen. Barack Obama has swept aside a characterisation of him as a vacuous celebrity in a new commercial broadcast by Sen John McCain's campaign team.

The adverts, likening Obama to celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, have kicked off a new negative phase of the campaign from the McCain camp. The adverts hint that, while the young Illinois senator has the undoubted capacity and charisma to draw huge crowds (the commercials showed shots of the recent huge Obama rally in Berlin), like the pop icons, he does not have the capacity to lead.

"He's the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?" the ad asks. [source]

The McCain campaign team has stepped up its anti-Obama rhetoric in recent days in tactics reminiscent of legendary (infamous?) political operative Karl Rove who used attack ads to great effect to win his boss, George W. Bush two terms in the White House.

McCain himself was the target of an untrue whisper campaign during the Republican primaries in 2000, alleged to have been started by Rove, which saw the senator subjected to rumours that he had fathered a baby by a black woman. McCain and his wife had adopted a Bangladeshi child, however the rumours played their part in eroding McCain's lead over Bush.