Swahili and Arabic names, unprecedented for someone seeking
the country’s highest office. “I got my middle name [Hussein],”
he explained, “from someone who obviously didn’t think I’d
ever run for president.”
After a series of bruising debates, Clinton won an unprece-
dented 18 million votes in the 2008 primaries but ultimately
lost the nomination to Obama. Although Clinton distinguished
herself in the numerous Democratic debates, particularly in
her mastery of the issues, Obama chose as his running mate
Delaware senator Joseph Biden, who had also sought the presi-
dential nomination.
The contest for the Democratic nomination was sometimes
so contentious it seemed to call for net and trident. In contrast,
the Republican contest was as dull as an infomercial. The
Republican candidates were all mature white men, including
9/11 New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former
Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. And their primary
strategy seemed to consist of distancing themselves from
President Bush without actually uttering his name and re-
minding voters that they were members of the president’s
party. Despite being counted out early in the contest, Viet-
nam War hero and Arizona senator John McCain eventually
emerged as the Republican presidential candidate. A self-
proclaimed maverick, McCain overcame such major obstacles
as his unpopularity among hard-core conservatives and his
age. If elected, he would become, at seventy-two, the oldest
person to assume the office.
But the Republican campaign suddenly caught fire in the last
days of August 2008 when McCain made the stunning an-
nouncement that his vice-presidential pick was not Democrat-
turned-Independent Joe Lieberman or another of the relative
Epilogue to the Twentieth-Anniversary Edition