And the winner is ... With one month to go before election clay, Richard Woiffe looks at Barack Obama's campaign and finds he is borrowing from George W. Bush's playbook

In: The world today, Band 68, Heft 6, S. 8-13

Abstract

Four years later, the challenges of re-electing President Obama have moved far beyond cultural and racial questions. There are three seemingly overwhelming obstacles to Obama's re-election. Unemployment remains stubbornly high four years after the financial meltdown that led to the loss of millions of American jobs in the last months of the Bush administration and the first months of the Obama term. Second, the world represents a volatile series of threats, even though the US has withdrawn from Iraq, and al-Qaeda's leadership has been decimated since 2008. Third, the rulebook of American campaigns has been torn to shreds, and the new doctrine of presidential elections is one founded more than ever on money. Adapted from the source document.