The Guardian's senior political commentator sizes up Senator Obama's chances of making it all the way to the White House

By Michael White

Feb 26, 2008 – OK, so Prozac may not work after all, bad news for some posters on this site. But what about Barack Obama's latest problem, which shared page one of today's Guardian?

At the book club last night where we were grappling with the ambiguities of The Turn of the Screw, as better folk have done before us, an ex-pat American friend was startlingly upbeat.

''Obama's on course,'' he predicted. ''For the Democratic nomination, I think yes,'' I replied. ''Oh no, for the White House,'' my friend countered.

He's older and smarter than me, it's his country too. But I felt moved to point out

that, while the senator's progress has been sensational by modern US standards, that he seems to have both brains and grace, there's a long way to go. ''And don't forget, he's black.''

My friend looked pained - that's so yesterday - but it isn't. I could have added that the Muslim issue - Obama's father was a Kenyan Muslim - has a lot of mileage in it too for the nativist right.

Check the more lurid US websites, the ones which also call his mother an atheist. It's the kind of rubbish a lot of gullible guardian.co.uk Comment is Free posters seem to relish.

Sure enough this morning's papers carry a photo of the senator wearing a turban. It's not a Photoshop job like the snap of John Kerry with Jane Fonda in 2004, but part of a traditional local outfit Obama donned out of politeness when visiting Somalia.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., right, is dressed as a Somali Elder by Sheikh Mahmed Hassan, left, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya in 2006, near the borders with Somalia and Ethiopia. The garb was presented to Obama by elders in Wajir. Obama's estranged late father was Kenyan and Obama visited the country in 2006, attracting thousands of well-wishers.

(AP Photo)

These welcoming gestures can be awkward. One of John Major's rules was ''never wear a hat'' but on a swansong trip to the Khyber Pass circa 1996 (couldn't do that now) he was ambushed by well-meaning elders and forced to don a turban. A hundred flashbulbs popped and those of us in the press pack wrote ''Carry on up the Khyber'' jokes. Life can be so unfair.

Obama's handlers blamed the Clinton camp, which countered that there is nothing to be ashamed about being filmed in a turban, which is a crafty but disingenuous answer.

Hillary Clinton is a fighter who isn't beaten yet. Nor is Bill. ''There's nothing left that the looney right can throw at us,'' is their message. Good point. Obama has a lot to face before he gets inside the Oval Office.

Some of the papers today re-open the potentially more significant case of the land adjacent to the Obamas' Chicago home which seems to have been bought for their convenience with money from a man described by Senator Clinton as '' a slum landlord'', who has been in trouble with the law.

It ain't over yet, and the most significant decision yet to be made is the choice of 71-year-old John McCain's Republican running mate. He - or she ? - could matter a lot to waiverers deciding the outcome in November and wondering who would get the job if President McCain blew a fatal fuse. That temper, apparently it's quite something.

I almost forgot. So much for the White House, but what about Henry James's celebrated novella? I think the book club consensus was that this seemingly straight-forward ghost story was deliberately crafted - contrary to James's later claims that The Turn of the Screw is just a fairy story - to attract the legion of critics who have fought over its deeper meaning ever since.

Overall, we felt that the ''apparitionist'' camp which believes the governess-narrator really did see the ghosts makes a better case than the anti-appartionists, most famously Edmund Wilson, who kept changing his mind over his claim that the whole story was the product of the suppressed and neurotic governess's imagination.

In passing we discussed Evil - with a capital E - and whether or not it exists, as distinct from depraved behavior of which most people are capable. James's half-acknowledged homosexuality also featured. Natch.

All good stuff and no firm conclusions. What surprised me was the vehement attack of James's ability as a writer. A very bad and confusing writer, willfully evasive opined two of our number and would not be shifted.

By chance this same pair recalled reading Thucydides in classical Greek at school when we discussed his great work, The Peloponnesian War, at last month's book club. Thucydides, whom I had not previously read, thought that what goes round in human affairs comes round again, which is true. So he consciously wrote for all time and 23 centuries later his work is still in Waterstones. Respect.

Source: Guardian