Who to vote for in the American election

America is having a presidential election soon. There are an unusually large range of loud, well-covered-by-the-media candidates.

There's McCain, a Republican who really seems rather reasonable, all things considered. He was a torture victim in Vietnam, and, for a Republican, is opposed to the use of torture in the 'war on terror'.

Then there's Romney, who's a hypocrite. He seems to have reversed his opinion on everything at least once in the last decade. He's a big torture man.

Then there's Giuliani, that annoying former New York mayor. He's a lovely character; he's in favour of waterboarding (although it is not specified, one assumes that he means for the nasty scary brown people, rather than for, say, his children), and on torture said that the United States should use "every method they could think of." He's also a bit of a hypocrite, shifting positions wildly on all sorts of things. He's against free health care. And he's open to the possibility of nuclear war with Iran. Rudy uber alles!

On the other side, there's Clinton (the female of the species). She's keen on hydrogen powered cars, she wants to ban burning flags, and she's willing to use torture, though the tone seems to be more as a last resort than Giuliani's; one receives the impression that Giuliani would like to subject people who salute inadequately when he walks by to the rack.

Then there's Barack Obama, who really does stand out. He's extremely articulate, seems very intelligent, more intelligent than you'd generally expect a politician to be, and his views seem broadly sensible; he even supports bringing in free health care, and supports social welfare. Sadly, I can't imagine that he'll actually be elected; would the southern states really vote for a black person?