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As the United States heads for the 2008 presidential election, American voters as well as Republican and Democratic candidates alike will be "more open-minded about new ideas" because they do not need to consider continuity from the current administration of President George W. Bush, according to Strobe Talbott, president of The Brookings Institution.
The 2008 campaign is the first in 80 years in U.S. history in which neither an incumbent president or vice president is running, and it also comes as even the Republican candidates are distancing themselves from what is widely perceived as Bush's "diplomatic disaster" over the war in Iraq, Talbott, a former deputy U.S. secretary of state, told a luncheon speech during the May 21 Keizai Koho Center-Brookings symposium.