Mitt Romney celebrated his victory in the Michigan primary election with an anti-Washington speech. His promise to "fix Washington" strengthened the impression that the 2008 US primaries resemble a market where new testaments are traded for old.
Mike Huckabee sells the evangelical New Testament. Mr Romney, with his flip flops, has offered a Wiki Testament. John McCain, whose poll results depend heavily on independents, says he has always been new.
The Democrats were effectively absent from Michigan but return with force on Saturday, in South Carolina. John Edwards, born in that state, promises to destroy the old way of doing politics. Barack Obama sells a new way of doing politics. Hillary Clinton has reinvented herself twice - first, she became a foreign policy hawk; now she is a caring hawk who embodies change.
US primaries are occasions often observed by Europeans with a mildly sneering fascination. Fascination with a process that brings out the heady mix of big money and redemptive rhetoric that electrifies American politics. A mild sneer arising from the cold comfort that, though the US dominates Europe, what goes on in US politics could never happen here.
I would not rest on that cold comfort. Europe may never become the United States of Europe. But one can resemble the US without imitating its federal structure. For example, by borrowing its forms of partisan organisation and political dissidence. Following US politics may well be an exercise in understanding trends that may only be just emerging in Europe.
Of course, we need to see the US process for what it is. Despite the anti-establishment rhetoric of many of the candidates this year, the primaries so far have affirmed the importance of political parties and their electoral machines.
Take the so-called surprise results from New Hampshire, last week. To begin with, there was nothing wrong with Monday's polls giving Mr Obama an average of a seven per cent lead over Ms Clinton - other than that they were too early. A few hours before the vote, 15 per cent of voters (some 40,000) still had to make up their mind. Three factors helped Ms Clinton get a larger share of those 40,000 votes than Mr Obama. One is that after Iowa she decided to target younger voters as systematically as he did. So, she did fish outside the ken of the traditional party machine.
However, an over-reliance on independent voters in New Hampshire proved costly to Mr Obama, who lost enough of them to Mr McCain. Ms Clinton was able to use the formidable Democrat machine to turn out the blue-collar vote - it has been said that her electoral staff know New Hampshire like the back of their hands.
To regain momentum, in South Carolina, Mr Obama is going to need to pay much closer attention to the traditional party base.
But what about Mr Obama's non-traditional appeal? Not to mention that of Mr Huckabee. The political attractiveness of both men certainly shows a popular frustration with their party leaderships. In the case of Mr Huckabee, in particular, one can see the conservative Christian base separating itself from their evangelical leaders, who in some cases have endorsed other candidates (like, of all people, Rudy Giuliani).
In Michigan, Mr Romney managed to attract as many evangelical voters as Mr Huckabee, but it may well have been his economic message that swayed those voters in an economically-depressed state. I myself suspect that Mr Romney's failure (so far) to attract the evangelical vote has as much to do with a rejection of a series of elite, economically-conservative Republicans who opportunistically became born-again Christians (of a sort) in the 1990s - a process traced out for the state of Kansas by the writer Thomas Frank - as with his personal flip flops.
That is, Mr Romney has been rejected not just because of his personal qualities but also because of the type of Republican politician that he represents. But it is another matter whether Mr Huckabee will manage to become a successful evangelical leader who captures enough of the mainstream vote as well. So far, Mr Huckabee does not have the money or the electoral organisation to go far in the primaries. He scares the wits out of the Republican establishment. He may turn out to be a truly Baptist figure - a John the Baptist, who paves the way for another who comes after him.
That, at any rate, seems to be the pattern followed with Mr Obama. That indefinable quality - his electability - owes a lot to predecessors. First, to Republicans like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice: by being both Afro-American and Republicans in charge of national security and America's reputation abroad, they made it possible for Americans, including conservatives, to envisage a different kind of Afro-American politician from the traditional type embodied by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
But Mr Obama's John the Baptist was (the white) Howard Dean in 2004. Mr Obama has adopted Mr Dean's mobilising techniques and his appeal to Democrats disaffected with the party machine. But he has ditched Mr Dean's red-faced fury for an inclusive, healing rhetoric.
He has realised the truth of the observation by the historian Lewis Namier - that the most important thing about political rhetoric is not the ideas but the emotions that carry them, like music. He has also recognised, even more so after New Hampshire, that for political music to have full resonance it needs the drumbeat of the party. All these issues, with their undercurrents of evangelical Protestantism and race, may seem too American, a far cry from Europe. Let us think again and continue to watch. The two most currently powerful political ideas in Europe - the idea of the end of history and of the clash of civilisations - are American in origin. They already respectively shape Europe's understanding of its domestic party politics and international relations.
ranierfsadni@europe.com