We have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back. The curtain has fallen on the yearlong theatrical run that is American presidential politics. The incumbent won — clearly — and the challenger lost — also clearly, rounding out an exhaustive and extravagant love affair with a result-oriented political…

Reality and expectation are not one and the same. After his 1992 defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton, outgoing incumbent George Bush neatly identified the source of his undoing. It wasn’t just that the American economy had shriveled, which it had, but that Clinton had at his disposal what…

President Ronald Reagan on a whistle stop train tour in 1984. He defeated Walter Mondale in a landslide. The final days of the U.S. presidential campaign helps illustrate just how America-watching plays out in Italy and in other countries where politics and politicians are generally disengaged from the fleshier side…