Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Barack Obama's pastor, Rev Jeremiah Wright, has lent unexpected significance to the presidential campaign, writes Vincent Browne.

FOR THE most part, American presidential elections are inconsequential, in the sense that it hardly matters who gets elected or how. The difference between candidates is more of tone than of substance. Once in office they all want to bomb somewhere, they do nothing about the staggering inequalities in American societies, they care nought about what the rest of the world thinks of America, they espouse the same banalities.