Joeseph Nye has a scary warning in yesterday’s Financial Times, about why bin Laden might want to help the GOP candidates this October and November:

On October 29 2004, four days before the last election, Al Jazeera aired an 18 minute video tape in which Osama bin Laden addressed the American people and threatened further retaliation and a desire to bankrupt the US. In the first poll after that tape was released, President George W. Bush opened up a six point lead over Senator John Kerry. The deputy director of the CIA commented that “Bin Laden certainly did a nice favour today for the president”.

Since the election turned on 120,000 votes in Ohio, it is plausible Mr bin Laden was able to affect the election. From the al-Qaeda leader’s point of view, Mr Bush’s policies were more useful for his efforts to recruit supporters than Mr Kerry’s might have been. Mr bin Laden is involved in a civil war within Islam. He wants the US to pursue policies that create the appearance of a clash of civilisations. Anything that polarises the mainstream of Muslim opinion helps his recruiting. As the deputy director for analysis at the CIA commented at the time: “Certainly, he would want Bush to keep doing what he’s doing for a few more years.”

From that point of view, Barack Obama must be unsettling for Mr bin Laden. An African-American with a father born in Kenya and a childhood spent partly in Indonesia presents a very different face to the world. A recent BBC poll of 22 countries found that if the world could vote, Mr Obama would win in a landslide. The pro-Obama margin varied from 82 percentage points in Kenya to 9 points in India.