LIKE Macbeth, we have all had an unwelcome guest at a party whose presence proved to be just a bit awkward. Someone has shown up whom we would rather not see, or be seen with, or who we had hoped would have gone away by now. Unlike Banquo's ghost, the unwelcome guest is all too visible, and all eyes are turned on us to see what we will do next. This is very much the situation that John McCain and Barack Obama find themselves in at the moment. They are both about to give the most important party of their lives – McCain's will be the Republican National Convention in Minnesota from September 1st to 4th and Obama's will be the Democratic National Convention in Denver from August 25th to 28th – and they both have some awkward guests to contend with. Unfortunately for John McCain, there is no way that he can have his party without inviting two of the most unpopular men in the United States, the President and Vice President, George Bush and Dick Cheney. They must be invited to speak to the assembled Republican masses and McCain must appear with them and have his picture taken with them even though, up to now, he has made a point of keeping his distance. He is running against the charge that he will be “Four more years of George Bush” so he does not want a lot of photographic evidence of close encounters with someone that the majority of the population would like to forget. The last time McCain appeared with Bush was at a fundraiser in Arizona in May which was famously closed to the press. No photos were allowed apart from a shot at the airport when both men were boarding the plane, and of course the story became the closed press. However, keeping the President at arm's length is also dangerous for McCain. Bush's job approval poll numbers, fairly constant at around an unbelievably low 30 percent, are not going to change. They represent a base of voters who have stuck with him for eight long years and are going to see him through to next January. You can call it loyalty; although there are other names for it. But no matter what you call it, John McCain needs those voters and dares not offend them. Although, they are unlikely to vote for Obama, if offended, they will not donate generously, volunteer enthusiastically, and on Election Day, they just might stay at home. So McCain walks a fine line as he attempts to burnish his Maverick brand to appeal to independent voters and yet distance himself, both physically and ideologically, from the head of his party, and all the while, allowing no whiff of betrayal to reach that 30 percent, many of whom have been suspicious of him from the start. It will require some very deft balancing, and it will be interesting to see how well McCain is able to carry it off. The most important party of Barack Obama's life will be no less challenging and in some ways maybe even more so. The problematic guests have always been the Clintons – they have to be invited, but what is their role to be, and in the end what will they do and say, especially, Bill. Recently, the Clintons have been joined on the list of awkward invitees by John Edwards, whose forced admission of marital infidelity, after at least a year of lying about it, has put paid to any chance of his being a vice presidential nominee or being offered a Cabinet post in an Obama administration. Of course, Edwards has always said that he was not interested in being considered for the vice presidential slot, and maybe now we know why. Apart from the question of what he thought he was doing running for the Democratic nomination for president in the primaries with all of that hidden baggage in his closet waiting to come out, the issue now is what role is Edwards to have at the Democratic Convention. There never was a plan for him to address the convention, but now will he even show up? And if he does conveniently decide to say that he is otherwise engaged and just can't make it, who will ever believe that his invitation card has not been snatched away from him by the Obama campaign? However, John Edwards' presence or absence is a mere sideshow. All eyes will be on the main ring to see what the Clintons have in store for us. Like a family of trapeze artists, they will all (Hillary, Bill and Chelsea) come bounding forth, take to the sky, and all eyes will be riveted on them as they fly through the airwaves with the greatest of ease. Hillary will speak on the second night of the convention and has made it known that she would like to be introduced by her daughter, Chelsea. Bill Clinton will speak on the third night of the convention just before the speech of the vice presidential nominee who is yet to be named. The Convention is being called “America's Town Hall” with members of the public invited to submit questions by Internet or web video to be answered by the speakers, and a bit like Disneyland, each night will have a theme: Unity, Security, Change. However, no matter what is actually said, in the case of the Clintons what everyone will really be listening for are the nuances, the subtext, the subtle emphasis or lack thereof on particular words and phrases. After all, speaking of answering questions, Bill Clinton in a recent TV interview could not bring himself to utter a simple “Yes” to the question: “Do you think Barack Obama is qualified to be president?” He instead responded with the quintessentially Clintonesque: “Well, you could argue that nobody is ever ready to be president.” And Hillary Clinton has recently spoken of how the 18 million people who voted for her need to have ‘catharsis.' It is just like a Greek drama, she said. They need to be able to shout and scream and get it out of their system, and then, she added, vote for Obama. She neglected to mention that the Greek dramas that she was referring to were all tragedies. Obama, who is on record as wanting as little drama, Greek or otherwise, as possible in his campaign, said that a cathartic experience at the convention was not exactly what he had in mind. However, like McCain needing Bush's 30 percent, Obama cannot afford to offend Hillary's 18 million. More importantly, it is not completely clear if Hillary (of course only in the interest of catharsis) will allow her name to put forth as a nominee thus requiring a possibly embarrassing roll call vote, rather than nominating Obama by voice acclamation. As Barack and Michele Obama vacation this week in Hawaii, they may be wondering how they will ever get through the anything-goes Denver convention. So there will be two big parties thrown in the next few weeks, and each of them may have some problematic moments. John McCain, a bit like a butterfly, will have to be seen hovering close to and then darting far away from the unpopular George Bush, and Barack Obama will have to cede the national spotlight to two people who are arguably amongst the most unpredictable figures in modern American politics. With guests like these, Macbeth was lucky that he only had Banquo's ghost to contend with. __
