 How does the author seem to feel about the upcoming presidential race?
Everyone agrees that George W. Bush is the front-runner, that Steve Forbes is in second place, and that Dan Quayle, who finished back in the pack with Lamar Alexander, will soon join Alexander on the sidelines. Here's a playback of their takes on the straw poll results and a look ahead at their playbook of messages for the remainder of the race. Newspapers, cramped for space, confined their headlines to Bush, Forbes, and Dole. As Fox News' Carl Cameron put it: "The other seven candidates could not crack double digits." The Boston Globe called Dole "the winner of this contest-within-the-contest." At a news conference, an aide introduced Dole as the straw poll's "real winner." Her spokesman told reporters that "on a dollar-per-vote basis, Elizabeth Dole trounced George Bush and Steve Forbes." "From a strict cost-benefit standpoint, the big winner may be Elizabeth Dole," concluded Time . Dismissive coverage of Dole before the straw poll played to her advantage, as everyone marveled at her "surprisingly" strong third. To prevent this, Dole needs to create a semifinal playoff--Forbes vs. Dole--to determine who gets to play Bush. The first of these is political experience, of which Bush has little and Forbes has almost none.
 excited to see how the contestants "battle"
 surprised by the atypical political happenings  excited to see how the contestants "battle"  confident that it will be a close race between the four  convinced that he already knows how the race will end