VIEWPOINTS: OBAMA VERSUS MCCAIN !

The big battle for the White House is about start. Who has the wind behind him, Barack Obama or John McCain? What hurdles do they face and what strategies can they employ to overcome them? Five leading US pundits give their views.
Click on the links below to read what they have to say.

"The election is Obama's to lose. The Democrats will be favoured."Larry J Sabato, University of Virginia
"There will be an effort to try to associate [Obama] with the tumultuous 1960s."Tom Mann, Brookings Institution.
"The Democrats have extraordinary enthusiasm on their side."Karlyn Bowman, American Enterprise Institute
"McCain has defied gravity in the last few months in terms of the numbers."Tony Fabrizio, Republican pollster
"McCain may be able to prove he is formidable without demonising Obama."Walter Shapiro, Salon.com

Larry J Sabato is professor of politics at the University of Virginia.
The election is Barack Obama's to lose. The Democrats will be favoured: there is an unpopular war, an unpopular president and the economy has tanked. But Obama has demonstrated serious weaknesses and he has a lot of ground to make up.

The issue of race is the great unknown for Barack Obama The great unknown for Obama is race - we simply don't know how it will play.
Obama will gain from minorities but will lose some of the white working class, particularly in the Rust Belt and the Appalachian region. Some will come back - the vast majority of those who voted for Hillary Clinton will come back, no matter how angry they are at the moment.
John McCain's strength in terms of the Republican Party is that he does have the image of the maverick and moderate, at a time when the public is deeply anti-Bush.
Another of his advantages, is that as we move into the fall, people will focus on defence, military policy and foreign policy.
The downside is his age. Last week, I really thought he was showing his age.
It will be a tough, uphill climb for him but it is doable.
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Tom Mann is an elections expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington
The political environment for John McCain is overwhelmingly hostile.

Barack Obama's ideological position will be tested by John McCainMcCain could start to try to discredit Barack Obama. He could play on a set of concerns that exist or could be planted in the course of the campaign.
Certainly, there is his relative inexperience in politics and public life. There will also be problems revolving around his race and ideology.
His cultural as well as ideological position will be tested by McCain, and there will be an effort to try to associate [his campaign] with the tumultuous 1960s: student radicalism, ideological extremism, lack of patriotism. But, it will be hard for McCain to sustain this.
Everything is pointing towards a negative referendum [on the Bush years]. Obama's challenge is to get himself known to more people; to tell his story, to share his values and to make people comfortable with him, so that in the last two months he can focus on more substantive things like Bush's failures.
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Karlyn Bowman is a public opinion researcher at the American Enterprise Institute.
The Democrats have extraordinary enthusiasm on their side.
There is a sour US mood, mostly directed at President Bush. John McCain has had to walk a fine line in terms of distancing himself from Bush, and has, so far, done well.
Obama's challenge will be to sustain the mood of enthusiasm over the summer Many polls have shown the race is dead even - but there are a lot of variables. Pew Polls, for example, have shown John McCain ahead on handling Iraq. The issue of national security will be seen as his strength.
However, there is less attention focused on Iraq at the moment. It's on the back burner and there is a steady simmer but the economy is the strongest issue.
Many Americans feel that the country has gone off on the wrong track, with inflation etc.
There are certainly concerns over Barack Obama's inexperience.
His challenge will be to sustain the mood of enthusiasm over the summer, which will be difficult as people begin to think about their holidays.
He's been drawing wonderful crowds, and there has been an extraordinary turnout of young people - but whether they turn out to vote in November remains to be seen.
It's a very exciting race
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Tony Fabrizio is a Republican strategist who is not working on the campaign.
John McCain has defied gravity in the last few months in terms of the numbers: he is running 10-13 points ahead of the generic Republican brand and is continuing to fly there. But he will need to keep the independents on board, if he doesn't, he has little chance of winning.
What are the Republicans waiting for? It's already June and they need to be defining the race The environment is favourable to Democratic Party but Barack Obama is an unknown commodity.
Is it possible that Obama might collapse under the weight of his own liberal record? Yes.
Is it possible that McCain could get defined as the third term of George W Bush? Yes.
One strategy for McCain is to make the race about Obama - to make it not about micro-policy but about ideological differences. Given Obama's record, this will be easy.
But what are the Republicans waiting for? It's already June and they need to be defining the race.
Obama portrays himself as mainstream, however he is anything but. If Obama isn't on the front pages of the newspapers soon defending himself, the Republican [campaign] isn't doing its job.
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Walter Shapiro is the Washington bureau chief of Salon.com.
One of the main issues is, can John McCain present himself as the reformer, as the person that voters in New Hampshire and Michigan - which he will have to win in November - fell in love with in 2000?
McCain will need to revive his appeal to hang on to independents.
He may be able to prove that he is formidable without demonising Obama.
He could, for example, really try to stress that he is someone with reform credentials to change Washington that are as good, if not better than Obama's.
It is quite possible that Obama, on the other hand, will have to focus on the negatives: that McCain is an old man who is out of touch, one who sold his soul to the devil on taxes to win the approval of President Bush.
The election is five months away, and we have no idea what the voters will be thinking about in October - whether it will terrorism, economy, or something we haven't even thought about. After all, six months ago we wouldn't have thought that people now would be talking about the price of gas.
We try so hard to get ahead of the story that we end up making certain predictions about many things that reasonable people agree are unknowable.

BBC NEWS REPORT.