Obama, Hillary—pack it in!

• I don't like the way the US presidential scramble is going, not one little bit.

This weekend, taking an average of recent polls, RealClearPolitics has Barack Obama just slightly ahead of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but John McCain beating either of them in a general election. As a lot of people are pointing out, this presidential race should be a walkover for the Democrats after eight years of Bush and the neo-cons; but suddenly McCain is edging ahead. What is wrong with these people?

OK, the long presidential campaign is in effect a series of tests which candidates must pass if they are to win popular trust. John Kerry in 2004 was a classic example of how not to pass the test. But if ever there was a time when the world needed a blast of fresh air in the White House—new policy, new style, new vision—it's now. An Obama presidency could be like a liberation. A Clinton presidency (another Clinton presidency) would be a vast improvement on anyone named Bush, but Hillary is carrying a lot of baggage with her, and is claiming experience she doesn't have (she's never really managed anything bigger than Bill, though admittedly that must be a handful).

But a McCain presidency would essentially be more of what we have now. He looks like a nice old guy, he's a war veteran, he's probably nice to kids and old folks, and he can even sound vaguely liberal if he tries hard. But he's a militarist, like Bush. He believes in force, in confrontation, in talking tough, even though the last eight years show just how effective that is. Under McCain the Iraq war would run on and on, nothing in the Middle East would change, global insurgency would continue to get worse. And the guy's 71, so there is a fair chance that he wouldn't last eight years, and we'd all be stuck with whoever he picks as his running mate—someone we don't even know yet, and who won't have a personal mandate from an electorate. We could end up with President Rumsfeld or President Wolfowitz, or clones thereof.

The longer the Democrats go on wrestling each other for the nomination, instead of focusing on the Republicans and November, the more likely a McCain presidency becomes, the more likely a gigantic Democratic betrayal becomes. It's the Democrats' fate to have thrown up their two best candidates in years at the exact same time—but I wish the two of them would understand what they're doing, put the interests of country and planet before personal aspiration, form a partnership, re-unite the party, and grind McCain into dust come November. Do we really want anyone to be the US president who puts private ambition ahead of the public interest of the country, and by extension the planet?

• Obama disappointed me this week. First he did everything he could to distance himself from his former friend and pastor Jeremiah Wright, who had said in a sermon way back in 2001: "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Well, you would have thought Wright had blown up the twin towers himself. Obama declared: "I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies" (something GW Bush himself could easily have said). He called Wright's words incendiary and twisted and inexcusable. Then, lo and behold, Obama was back-tracking like mad and trying to reassure African America that it really wasn't how it sounded. You gotta understand how the Reverend felt. "The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races." Which is maybe what he should have said in the first place.

This week Obama didn't look like a man of principle. He looked like a man already tangled up in politics so tight that truth has already given way to fancy footwork. And the truth is that Wright was perfectly right—that was the sound of chickens coming home to roost. He wasn't saying anything that hundreds and thousands of other commentators haven't said too. If you're going to preach about "the audacity of hope", you better be audacious when the moment comes, and Obama funked it.

• This week was the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and of course GW Bush pronounced that the world is better and the US safer because of it. While he was gloating, the Red Cross was reporting that conditions in Iraq were among the worst in the world, millions have no access to clean water, health care is "in worse shape than ever", and tens of thousands of people have simply disappeared without trace. Amnesty International was reporting the case of a Yemeni man who had been held for years in secret military detention centres in Iraq, Afghanistan, Romania or Poland, and finally in Yemen: he had been tortured, kept in isolation for months on end, never charged, and only released in May last year. Nearly 4,000 American servicemen have come home in body bags. Long live freedom and democracy.

• Nobody knows how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last five years thanks to the Bush gang. Estimates range from just under 100,000 to almost 1.5 million (more than the entire population of Trinidad and Tobago), depending on who you read and how the counting was done. They are all guesses: as General Tommy Franks famously remarked, "We don't do body counts." Why wasn't the man crucified for saying that?

• Speaking of which. This weekend is a holy one for Christians, marking the execution of their founder by the Romans around 30 AD and his supposed return to life about a day and a half later (not three days, as the Christians always say: Friday afternoon to Sunday morning makes three days???). Personally, I don't believe any sort of resurrection took place, but it's still a powerful story in terms of myth (in the best sense—not a falsehood but an archetypal spiritual experience).

The Christian emphasis on the dreadfulness of crucifixion as a method of execution has always jarred on me, though. They always make it sound as if Jesus was the only one to suffer it, as if it was a torture specially invented for him. It was indeed an appalling piece of brutality, sadistic and excruciatingly painful.

But for the first-century Roman empire, all non-Roman life was cheap. (Rather like Iraqi civilian life under the present empire.) Soldiers would amuse themselves trying out new positions for crucifixion to maximise the pain. They were the Nazis of their day. They thought nothing of staging mass crucifixions—6,000 of Spartacus's rebels were crucified simultaneously along a highway out of Rome. For all its barbarity, crucifixion was a common punishment, and exactly what Jesus would have expected when he chose to ride into Jerusalem allowing people to call him "king of the Jews". It would be like riding into Baghdad as the "king of al-Qaeda".

• Amazingly, handfuls of Catholic zealots in Mexico and the Philippines to this day have themselves crucified on Good Friday, such is their sense of guilt and their identification with the humiliated god. Real lashes strip flesh off their backs, they lug real wooden crosses around on bloody shoulders, and some even submit to having real nails hammered through their wrists. It has become quite a tourist attraction. In the Philippines this year, aspirants to self-crucifixion were sternly warned by the health authorities to make sure they got tetanus shots prior to flagellation, that their whips were well maintained, and that nails should be carefully disinfected before use.

Down what strange byways does religion lead the faithful.

• Back home in T&T, plans to buy the government a private executive jet finally fell through. It was officially said that T&T was insisting on a non-corruption clause in the contract, which was contrary to the supplier's business practice. It was unofficially said that the whole thing had become too embarrassing and had to be swept under the carpet until a more suitable time. Who knows?

• T&T's head of state, President Max Richards, was sworn in for a second term this week in a sports stadium. He solemnly warned Trinidad and Tobago not to become a "failed state". Why was he talking to us, people asked? He should be talking to the politicians, who were there in all their finery.