The Question: The U.S. starts to choose a president this week. If you could send the candidates one message, what would it be?

I have two short pieces of advice: One, stop allowing yourselves to be taken over by the growing sentiment against immigrants, and particularly against Hispanics, that now exists in American society. This Lou Dobbs rhetoric is truly dangerous. Two, reject the increasing temptation to be protectionist when it comes to foreign trade.

The Current Discussion: With the U.S. presidential primary season in full swing, there's a lot of talk here about "change" vs. "competence" in leadership. Which does your country have more of? Is that a good thing?

Young Senator Barack Obama has become the great revelation in the U.S. elections. Not only because he is the first African-American candidate with a serious chance to become president, but also because he says he embodies the change that American society presumably needs. Among the Republicans, Mitt Romney, a successful Mormon businessman, former governor of Massachusetts, the quintessence of the country's economic and political establishment, is running for president making the selfsame argument: he asserts that he represents change. It seems the word is very much welcome by voters.

The two men may be wrong. The function of American politicians is not to generate changes but to regulate them.

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