THE US PRESIDENTIAL RACE between Senator Barach Obama and Senator John McCain, as they say in racing parlance, is in a political "neck and neck." And this is happening even before their official nomination in the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican Parties.

Not only are the two presumptive nominees exchanging verbal blows at each other in their separate political campaigns, throwing up endless gaffes and unwisely uttered truths, but they are also telling lies about their own life without even blinking.

In McCain's case, he has been caught in a lie about his record in the Vietnam War, changing his war story as POW for five years and emerged as a war hero. Obama, too, lied when he told his audience in Alabama that he was a product of the famous Selma March when in fact he was only four years when it occurred.

Just like all politicians, I suppose, they'll say anything to get elected to public office, and, in this case of Obama and McCain, to the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C.

Now, this early not a few political observers, analysts, pundits, writers, historians and savants in academe, in America, the Philippines and elsewhere in the world, are already talking about who will be victorious in what's called "the most intense and expensive" White House race in the history of US politics. Who is their choice between the largely unknown, young and inexperienced Obama, and McCain, the elderly experienced statesman and war hero.

I noticed that Obama has been getting much wider publicity than McCain in the political media establishment, especially in the US mainstream newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Los Angeles Times, Politico, among others, and in radio and television news and talk shows. Perhaps it's because Obama has created the impression that he's a new kind of political leader, while McCain's persona is already in place.

None of the pundits, columnists, commentators and prognosticators, however, openly underestimate McCain. He has somehow managed to veer himself away from the unpopular President Bush, and he even audaciously challenged the economic policies of the administration of both the elder and the younger Bush. Still, Obama appears to be the more exceptional presidential candidate.

And this is the reason why some of the more perceptive political observers are predicting, and betting on, the victory of Obama over McCain in the general election in November. One of them even bravely gave three "good reasons" he believed Obama will prevail, namely:

First, America has changed. "America is no longer a Protestant, Anglo-Saxon country, European by tradition and white by vocation, that cannot seriously imagine a black man running the presidency"; Second, Obama is not a typical African-American that carries the heritage of slavery or the memory of segregation because he was born of a Kenyan father and a white American mother"; and Third, "he is good.. he is not only the most charismatic but also the most gifted politician produced by the Democratic machine in a long time."

On the other hand, there are others who see Obama in a different light, as shown in this week's cover of the prestigious and influential New Yorker. It's a satirical political cartoon showing Barack Obama and his wife Michelle standing in the Oval Office, with Barack wearing a turban, Michelle sporting an afro and carrying an AK-47, and a portrait of Osama bin Laden hanging over the mantelpiece.

Naturally, the cartoon provoked mixed reactions from different quarters, some calling it an acceptable piece of satire while others attacking it, particularly the campaign operatives of Obama as well as certain political critics. They interpreted it as satirical comment on what has been described as the "ludicrous rumors" which have been going around the Internet and repeated endlessly on cable news. Obviously, it was an allusion to the rumors that Obama is a Muslim, and it echoed doubts of Obama's identity, faith, and patriotism.

Of course, The New Yorker editor David Remnick defended the work of the cartoonist Barry Blitt. In a statement he said the cartoon "combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are.

Satire is part of what we do, and it is meant to ring things out in the open, to hold a mirror up to prejudice, the hateful, and the absurd."

Perhaps, someone else suggested, the cartoon should have been titled "The Politics of Fear."

Oh, yes, very much unlike that satirical cartoon in New York, there is in Boston's main street a mural-sized portrait that depicts Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's face in combination with the bearded face of the iconic American President Abraham Lincoln, whom the eloquent Barack sometimes names and sometimes namelessly invokes in his campaign speeches and even presumptuously likens himself in print to the Great Emancipator.