US Election Diary: When a loss is an omen for a win

Have the Washington Redskins predicted the election outcome? The football team lost 28-14 to the Green Bay Packers at home yesterday and, if tradition holds, this means President George W. Bush is bound to lose the White House. The legend surrounding the Redskins' last home game before election day is simplicity itself: If they win, the White House incumbent will remain president. If they lose, the incumbent loses. The Redskins' electoral barometer has held true for 17 straight elections - a record that professional pollsters can only dream of. "I couldn't be more thrilled with the Packers win today," Senator John Kerry said.

Counting masks and pets

Then again, some believe mask sales and pets hold the key to the White House. Halloween costume mask sales have predicted the result correctly in every election since 1980. Bush masks have, it seems, outsold Kerry ones by 10 per cent. The petometer also favours Bush. Strange but true, the candidate with the most family pets usually wins the White House. In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt (34 pets) trounced Alton Parker (one dog). In 1932, FDR (11 pets) squeaked past Herbert Hoover (10 pets). JFK in 1960 out-petted Richard Nixon by a massive 29 to one. A wiser man in 1968, Nixon added three dogs to give him a four-pets-to-one edge on Hubert Humphrey. Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980, given his six-to-two lead on his rival. And this year? Kerry has two pets, a German shepherd and a parakeet. Bush has three: a cat, a cow and Scottish terrier Barney. Looks like a done deal.

Yes, he's powerful but ...

For weeks now, the Republicans have suggested that a vote for Kerry means a vote for al Qaeda. Even bumper stickers have reinforced that message. Now, in the light of the Osama bin Laden video, people are asking: why would the media-savvy Saudi terrorist issue a tape that could lead to the re-election of Bush? One of the most bizarre conspiracy theories was that the man who had stage-managed the video's release was the chief political strategist of the US President, Karl Rove. Former news anchor Walter Cronkite said on CNN's Larry King programme that he was "inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man ... probably set up bin Laden to this thing." It was meanwhile claimed that far from inspiring the tape, the US Ambassador to Qatar tried to prevent its broadcast after it was dropped off at the al Jazeera offices in Islamabad. Bin Laden's message refrained from endorsing one candidate or the other.

Tongue-tripping on film

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family, a sympathetic Bush told baffled single mothers in one of his inimitable foot-in-mouth utterances. A new political film is taking a poke at the lexicon of unique words and phrases invented by the leader of the free world. The one-hour film titled Bushisms lampoons 50 of the President's most memorable verbal gaffes, welding them together with commentary by US comedian Brian Unger and author Jacob Weisberg, who has compiled three volumes of Bushisms into book form. "It'll take time to restore chaos," Bush reassured people in one speech in the movie.

- INDEPENDENT