Presidential Elections

As the nation impatiently waited Tuesday for primary results from Indiana's Lake County -- and the city of Gary in particular -- Hoosiers had a sinking feeling. Once again, Gary was going to be the butt of a joke. Brian Howey, a syndicated political columnist in Indianapolis, watched the news broadcasts until 3 a.m. with a growing sense of dread. Cynthia Solomon, a retired accountant from Fort Wayne, buried her head in her pillow and groaned.

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is considering whether to pull out of the June 27 presidential runoff election, fearing it will be a charade, a spokesman said Friday. A growing number of African nations, the United States and former colonial power Britain have said they do not believe the balloting will be free and fair because of violence that the opposition blames on President Robert Mugabe.

I've long believed that the deepest divide in American society is not the lines separating genders, races and classes but, rather, the gulf between people who have normal, easily pronounceable names and those who don't. I'm not saying that having a name like Smith or Thompson or Hernandez is an express ticket to a carefree life. And the issue isn't ethnicity and its attendant cultural baggage.

Things have changed a lot in the land of the billion-dollar plastic shopping bag in the last couple of months. Before the March 29 presidential election, the biggest bank note was $50 million. Now, in the wake of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's decision to pull out of the runoff vote scheduled for Friday, there is a $50 billion bank note and one U.S. dollar buys more than 7 billion Zimbabwean dollars.

Major League Baseball agreed Wednesday to delay the start of a World Series game by about 15 minutes to make room for a television commercial that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama plans to run Oct. 29. That would be the date for Game 6 of the baseball championship, if a sixth game is necessary. Obama's campaign this month negotiated to buy the same half-hour of prime time -- from 8 to 8:30 p.m. EDT that night -- on CBS and NBC.

Is it Tuesday yet? Even the most patriotic of us might be feeling election fatigue this week. Campaigns generally are messy affairs, with stories that keep changing and endings that never seem to come, and the Obama-McCain battle has been no different. But that's not the case when Hollywood directs a political race. In the movies, candidates make clever speeches, the bad guys get their due and things are wrapped up in a couple of hours.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy accepted the presidential nomination of the ruling center-right party Sunday, promising to break with the past and setting up a high-stakes campaign that is likely to open a new era in French politics. The overwhelming vote by members of the Union for a Popular Movement party culminated a drive by Sarkozy that overcame an intraparty rift with an old guard loyal to President Jacques Chirac, 74, who has been in office since 1995.

Forget the jokes about caucusing in brothels, or trawling for votes amid the slot machines and blackjack tables along the neon-drenched Strip. When Democratic presidential hopefuls come calling on Nevada, the real challenge will be the party faithful they find in this independent-minded state, which will host the West's first nominating contest in a little over a year.

Turkmenistan's acting president overwhelmingly won an election pitting him against five other members of the country's only legal political party, the head of the central elections commission said. Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov won 89.23% of Sunday's vote, commission director Murad Karyyev said. It was the first time Turkmenistan held a presidential election with more than one candidate. Berdimukhamedov became interim president after the Dec. 21 death of Saparmurad A.