In a ForeignPolicy.com exclusive today, Marcia Pally, a professor at NYU, asks whether we can expect to see a foreign policy shift emerge from Washington now that the Democrats are back in control of the House, possibly the Senate, and gearing up for a serious bid for the White House. She finds that the Democrats have far more in common with President Bush than they care to admit.

[W]hen it comes to American foreign policy, the shift will be far less dramatic. The reason isn't simply that foreign-policy decisions typically lie in the domain of the executive. It is because President George W. Bush's approach to America's role in the world is not as remarkable as it is often claimed to be. ...Indeed, the foreign policies of both parties have never been substantially different. As they look ahead to the race for the Oval Office in 2008, Democrats are not likely to stray far from Bush's foreign policy, as it is a tradition partly of their own making.

Want to know who will come out on top today? No, it's not the Democrats. Must be the Republicans, you say? Nope. It's the lawyers. That's right, the lawyers. Voting is only a few hours old and the court orders are already flying.

My prediction for this election day is that, with one-third of the country voting on new electronic machines, we will see a record amount of legal action contesting the results.

I hope I'm wrong -- very wrong. I hope that by midnight tonight, we know more or less who has won and lost. But after going to the polls in my neighborhood this morning, I'm not betting on it. When I arrived at my polling place in northern Virginia this morning around 7:45 a.m., I was greeted by -- you guessed it -- trouble with the electronic voting machines. The election officials were apologizing profusely because only four of five electronic voting machines were working. This was causing lines and delays. No one knew how to fix the fifth machine. I waited nearly an hour to vote, in one of the most hotly contested states in the country. It was sure to get worse as the day wore on, an election official quietly confided to me.

I don't mind waiting an hour to cast my vote. That's a small price to pay for democracy. But with more serious problems already being reported in Ohio, Indiana, and Florida, I'm guessing the lawyers will have a field day with this election. Let's hope I'm wrong. We'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, check out this excellent primer on why this election could be the most contested in history.

There are just a few days left in one of the tightest U.S. Congressional elections in recent memory. With foreign-policy issues at the forefront of voters' minds, this week's List takes a look at where the people asking for votes actually stand on issues of vital importance to American foreign policy. From Iraq to immigration to trade, this is how the candidates stack up. 

Plus, don't miss the Web Exclusive on ForeignPolicy.com where FP's editors canvass some of the leading political journalists, policy experts, and Washington insiders for a look at how American foreign policy would change if the Democrats were to take Congress. With so much at stake on November 7, it's worth a read.  

News reports this morning that the Pakistani military had leveled a madrassa without the help of U.S. forces seemed suspect. For starters, why go after such a politically sensitive target as a madrassa if no "high profile targets" were inside, as Pakistani officials insisted there were not.

Now it turns out there may have been good reason to be suspicious. Over at The Blotter, Alexis Debat is reporting that the madrassa raid was not only carried out by a U.S. Predator drone, but that Ayman al-Zawahiri was the target.

Maybe taking out Al Qaeda's Number Two was supposed to be the October surprise? Debat reports that Pakistani intelligence sources say they have Zawahiri "boxed" in a 40-square-mile area in Afghanistan, and he should be dead or captured in the next "few months."

It's now two weeks and counting until the U.S. midterm elections. And depending on whom you choose to believe, it's either the biggest election in recent memory or no big deal. What it might just be is a huge snafu. A report out today from the Election Reform Information Project predicts that polls across the country will be marred by technical problems from unproven new voting machines, confusion over stricter ID requirements and new poll locations, and troubles from inconsistent registration procedures. So whether Dems take the House, Senate, or both, there may be more than a few questionable results.

But just what will change in the realm of U.S. foreign policy if the Dems win? To find out, FP recently asked more than a dozen Washington insiders, ex-politicians, and pundits to speculate on U.S. foreign policy under a Dem-led Congress. Their answers will surprise you - they range from Rumsfeld's swift exit to more bipartisan cooperation to no change at all. Still, while a Democratic sweep may be racking up more and more believers, there are still 14 days to go. And with some candidates getting their names chopped off by faulty voter machines - a problem that can't be fixed before November 7 - there's reason to believe that this election is going to deliver more than its fair share of surprises.

And bonus: Don't miss the Post's Midterm Madness interactive game.

The Los Angeles Times has some fun at the failed Mexican presidential candidate's expense. Voters in his home province of Tabasco voted against his movement's candidate in the governor's race.

Voters in the southeast state, a stronghold of Lopez Obrador's leftist Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, have delivered the following message to the former presidential candidate: Get over yourself. By a 10-point margin, they elected Andres Granier, the candidate of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. This after Lopez Obrador spent three weeks campaigning alongside his party's candidate, Cesar Raul Ojeda. Before Lopez Obrador's meltdown last summer, Ojeda had been leading in the polls.

Unsurprisingly, Lopez Obrador has signaled that he will challenge the results.

In late August, Lionel Jospin made a dramatic return to the French political scene, four years after he was knocked out in the first round of presidential voting. In an emotional speech, Jospin presented himself as the elder statesman of France, the true Socialist. Or, to put it more bluntly: the stop-Ségolène-Royal candidate. Today, he pulled out of the race.

Jospin's candidacy had failed to catch on with Socialist voters, among whom he trailed Royal 54 to 21 percent. Jospin had also failed to persuade the other male candidates, who have even lower ratings, to withdraw in his favor.

If this isn't enough to put a spring in Ségolène's step, there's also a new TV show in France featuring a charismatic female president. Now for all to be well in the Royal household, she just needs to persuade her common-law husband to confirm that he's standing aside for her. 

Or at least that's what Beijing is hoping to do ahead of the September 28 election in the copper-rich African country. China, which has invested hundreds of millions in Zambia in recent years, has threatened to cut diplomatic ties and put investments on hold if citizens elect Michael Sata, the opposition leader gaining ground on the incumbent president. Sata has met with Taiwanese businessmen and once called Taiwan a sovereign state, angering the country's Chinese investors. And it isn't just Taiwan that has irritated the Chinese. Sata has had the courage to come out against worker exploitation in Chinese-owned mines:

They ill-treat our people (and) that is unacceptable. We are not going to condone exploiting investors because this country belongs to Zambians," Sata said in the radio interview.

Be sure to watch that election later this month. 

The FT has scored a rare interview with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, catching the leftist presidential candidate in his tent in Mexico City's main square, where he has been camped out with thousands of his supporters in protest of what they have called fraudulent elections for the country's top office. Lopez Obrador freely admits that his civil resistance movement - in its third week - is losing popular support. But even after a partial recount of votes and an upcoming decision on the ultimate winner of the presidential contest, it's clear that Lopez Obrador has no intention of stepping aside. He told the FT:

If the tribunal ratifies the fraud the presidential election would be a flagrant violation in terms of all the constitutional principals. If the institutions, that is the presidency and the judicial system, do not act with respect for the Constitution and it is confirmed that the institutions are obsolete and that they have been kidnapped by a local interest group, well then the institutions do not work and it is necessary to reform them. That is what we are going to do.

If the fraud is ratified, I could not recognise the institutions, obviously I would not recognise Felipe Calderón because I would consider him to be a spurious, illegal and illegitimate president, and we would fight to make democracy count, renovate the institutions and undertake the changes this country needs.

There's also worry that the protests could get out of hand if the tribunal ratifies his rival's electoral victory:

FT: Walking along Reforma in the past few days it has struck me that there are some very radical people – certainly not the majority – but people who are even talking about an armed struggle. Doesn’t that worry you?

LÓPEZ OBRADOR: This is a peaceful movement.

FT: But doesn’t it worry you that there are such radical people supporting you?

LÓPEZ OBRADOR: No, because the movement's leadership has always said that this is a peaceful movement, not a violent one.

French politics may be getting a little dirtier - or at least a bit more intrusive. James caught us all up recently on Bikinigate: paparazzi photos of French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal in her bikini on a beach near Cannes. Now comes the revelation that while Royal was vacationing, her family's flat in Paris was ransacked - and not a thing was stolen. With the race to succeed Chirac next year heating up, Royal thinks supporters of her main rival, Nicolas Sarkozy, are behind the break-in. 

Mme Royal, 52, said: "This was not a burglary, but an intrusion and a full-scale search of my home in which nothing was stolen. Everything was turned upside down, the cupboards were emptied." Police said that the intruders had broken in through a window in the ground-floor flat and ripped the telephone wires out of the wall. ...[Royal] added that she had asked for the security of the telephone lines to be checked, implying that they might have been tapped.

At least one police officer has played down the possibility that it was an official job, remarking:

When a secret service carries out a job, it doesn't leave any trace behind, or it makes its intervention look like a burglary."

With only two weeks having passed since being inaugurated and beginning his second chance at running the country, Peru's Alan Garcia shouldn't be surprised that the presidential honeymoon is still going strong. Nonetheless, his approval rating of 71.8 percent is pretty impressive, considering that his first time in the driver's seat (1985-1990) ended when he ignominiously fled Peru under charges of corruption, after guiding the country into near civil war with the Shining Path guerillas while the economy went into four-digit inflation. If Garcia can keep up even a middling approval rating, it'll be fair to call his return to office the most successful (and theatrical) political comeback Latin America has seen for a long time.

His return to grace is even more incredible if you recall that Peruvians weren't too happy with either of their candidates just a short time before the election in June--some likened their electoral options to a choice between cancer and AIDS. (It wasn't clear which one Garcia was supposed to be.) 

Hugo Chavez has a new challenger in the upcoming presidential election, and no one's taking him seriously. But that shouldn't bother Benjamin Rausseo, a shoeshiner-turned-comedian who declared his candidacy on Friday. After all, people have been laughing at him all his life.

Running without any apparent qualifications but plenty of name recognition, Mr. Rausseo

 has slim hopes of winning.  But if nothing else, he'll add some humor to what is likely to be a humorless (and less-than-fair) race.  And even if he fails miserably, he can always go back to the funny business.

We're both ugly, we both have kinky hair, we both come from the lower class--but the difference is I live here in Venezuela"--candidate Benjamin Rausseo, alluding to Chavez' frequent trips abroad

With all that is going on in the Middle East, it is easy to forget about the rest of the world. But there is some important—and good—news from Africa right now: Cyril Ramaphosa looks set for a political comeback. The South African press is reporting that he'll run for the presidency of the ANC in 2007 and if he wins, he'll almost certainly become the country's president in 2009. (Ramaphosa poured some cold water on the suggestion today, but was far from Shermanesque in his denials.)

Ramaphosa is one of the great heroes of the anti-apartheid struggle. At the National Union of Mineworkers, he got the color bar lifted in the mines before apartheid was abolished. He was then the ANC's chief negotiator as apartheid was dismantled between 1990 and 1994. He was widely believed to be Nelson Mandela's choice for the presidency but was edged out by Thabo Mbeki. Ramaphosa's main rival for the next presidency will likely be populist Jacob Zuma, recently acquitted of rape, but still facing a corruption trial.

Mbeki's presidency is looking to be a disappointment. In some ways this was inevitable -  succeeding a secular saint like Mandela (or Vaclav Havel) is a nigh-on-impossible task -  but Ramaphosa is what South Africa needs now. Since departing the political scene, he's become a successful businessman. Crucially, he's not in denial about AIDS—unlike Mbeki and Zuma—and serves as the vice-chairman of the Global Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS. He's also taken a far tougher line than Mbeki on Robert Mugabe's disastrous regime in Zimbabwe. By contrast, Zuma would likely be a disaster for South Africa. His divisive populism and know-nothing approach to AIDS could set the country back years.

The four D's of the African apocalypse--Death, Disease, Disaster, and Despair--have some new friends: Hope and Progress. That's the word from renowned journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault, whose book New News Out of Africa offers an optimistic view of Africa's future at the same time that it draws attention to the continent's seemingly crushing problems.  

In a talk this morning at the Center for American Progress, Hunter-Gault made the case for "a second wind of change blowing across Africa." Citing a series of initiatives intended to provide "African solutions to African problems," Hunter-Gault spoke of the things that are going well, including the groundbreaking Africa Peer Review Mechanism, an ambitious, home-grown project that is helping African leaders hold each other accountable to agreed-on standards of governance, economic policy, and human rights.