Nineteen sixty-eight was a vintage year, as was 1992. And, I confidently predict, 2008 will be one too. I am not speaking of fine bottles of Chateau Lafite but rather US presidential politics. The campaign that will culminate on Nov. 4 is already shaping up as a classic, replete with the requisite elements of a cracking contest: a gaggle of intriguing candidates with complicated histories, volatility in the electorate, and an unpredictable result. And up for grabs is the leadership of the world’s sole superpower. The stakes could not be higher for Americans and for everyone else.

The battle for 2008 was always going to be open, with no incumbent on either side. But there was a time when the two parties’ choices seemed easy to guess: an aura of inevitability wreathed itself around Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani. That would have been a slugfest to savour, a New York derby pitting two scarred bruisers with a talent for doling out and absorbing punishment.

Now both those frontrunners, while still narrowly ahead , are stumbling, watching the momentum flow towards their rivals - especially in make-or-break Iowa and New Hampshire, which vote next month. As Barack Obama surges among Democrats in Iowa, it is becoming possible to imagine 2008 as the first US election since 1976 without either a Clinton or Bush. Suddenly, nothing is predictable.

Already some weirdnesses are clear. The two candidates who polls rate as the most electable for their respective parties are lagging behind. Surveys show John Edwards beating every Republican on offer, yet Democrats rank him behind Clinton and Obama. John McCain is the only Republican who polls ahead of the three leading Democrats in a match-up, yet he is stuck in fourth place.

Stranger still, the main candidates are deeply flawed. Obama is young and inexperienced; Edwards, with his $400 haircuts, has an authenticity problem; Hillary is seen as establishment and robotic. Among the Republicans, McCain, at 70, is old and an advocate of an unpopular war in Iraq. Giuliani’s liberal stance on guns, gays and abortion and a Technicolor personal life that has seen him defending the taxpayer-funded security detail that protected his lover when he was the married mayor of New York have alienated him from the family-values voters who can decide Republican contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Mitt Romney has the big hair and dazzling smile of a Hollywood president. Trouble is, he’s a Mormon seeking the votes of evangelicals who refuse to recognise him as a Christian. TV actor and former senator Fred Thompson is such a lethargic campaigner, he’s in single digits.

No wonder, that leaves Mike Huckabee, the new and entirely unexpected star of

the 2008 campaign. His warm, folksy, fluency has drawn comparisons with Bill Clinton: like Clinton, he was born in a town called Hope and served as a popular Arkansas governor. Unlike Clinton, he’s a Baptist preacher who does not believe in evolution and suggested in 1992 that

people living with Aids should be quarantined. He’s so clueless on foreign affairs, he hadn’t even heard of last week’s intelligence report on Iran’s non-bomb - 24 hours after it had been on every TV news bulletin and front page. He may well win in Iowa on Jan. 3 and he’s currently tied with Giuliani in national polls of Republicans.

Against that Republican crop is a Democratic trio with just a few years in the Senate between them and the not-quite-experience of eight years as first lady. As one Republican commentator puts it, “What happens if both parties nominate a candidate who can’t win?” All this is

great fun as spectator sport. But for those watching, especially those in governing

circles in other countries, there are some important lessons to learn too. The first is that wit and warmth matter enormously in today’s politics. Huckabee’s rise can be explained almost entirely by his easy manner. Both he and Obama deploy a weapon that could protect others under fire if only they could acquire it: humour.

More importantly, the contest offers heartening evidence that a more progressive mood may be dawning in the US. Start in the most obvious place, among the Democrats. It’s worth spelling out what would once have been unimaginable: the two lead contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination are a black man and a white woman. The notion of either a black or female president was once the stuff of fanciful “what if” movies. Not now.

What to make of this noisy, confusing circus? We might not be on the brink of a progressive moment in US politics. But we could be witnessing the end of the Bush era — in which war on terror overshadowed all else — to be replaced by one that focuses on other questions, which transcend the old partisan lines. How it will play out is anyone’s guess. But all those who care about the direction of our world over the next four years had better pay attention. — The Guardian