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Listen Listen to the debate (audio only)
Ahead of Super Tuesday - the day when 24 US states decide on their preferred candidate for the Presidency - BBC World Service and Chicago Public Radio presented a major debate on the big election issues live from Chicago on Saturday 2 February.
Election 2008: America's Decision - Your Business came from the Jim And Kay Mabie Performance Studio of Chicago Public Radio.
Presented by the BBC's Claire Bolderson and Richard Steele from Chicago Public Radio, the debate saw four select studio guests and their audience focus on the global economy and foreign policy, internal debate in the US, and the impact on the rest of the world.
The panellists were Tom Bevan, editor of the website RealClearPolitics; professor Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago; Laura Washington of the Chicago Sun-Times; and professor Daniel Drezner of the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Ahead of the debate, our correspondents asked people in some of the countries with a key interest in US foreign policy what they hoped to see a new president do once they come to power.
Watch See what people from Israel, Venezuela, India, Japan and Egypt think of the US election
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The Panellists
- Jean Bethke-Elshtain is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where she also serves in the Department of Political Science and the Committee on International Relations. Elshtain is a political philosopher focusing on politics and ethics. Her last book was called Just War Against Terror: The Burden Of American Power In A Violent World. In 2006, she was appointed by President Bush to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Tom Bevan is the co-founder and executive editor of the weblog RealClearPolitics.com, which launched in August of 2000. Since then, Real Clear Politics has grown into one of the most widely read independent political sites on the internet, reaching an audience of more than half a million readers each month. In addition to writing a weekly feature for Real Clear Politics, Bevan is an occasional contributor to the Chicago Sun-Times. He says he is "obsessed" with politics.
- Daniel Drezner is associate professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He also has taught at the University of Chicago, Colorado and at Donetsk Technical University in the Ukraine. His work looks at the extent to which economic interdependence alters the patterns of world politics, in particular the rise of China and India. He is the author of four books, and keeps a daily weblog at danieldrezner.com.
- Laura Washington is the Ida B Wells-Barnett University Professor at DePaul University, where she teaches in the Communications department and in the African and Black Diaspora Studies program. She is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and a senior editor at In These Times. Washington specializes in media-related issues, African-American affairs, local and national politics, race and racism, and social justice. She is a regular commentator on American public radio.
