An explanation for the anemia of the electoral campaign is the absence of the nationalism in the public debates An electoral campaign is interesting not only because of the topics it tackles but also by the ones it avoids. The big absent in the campaign that has just started is the nationalism. For now, at least. This is the big difference comparing to the previous electoral confrontations. The nationalist discourse dominated the 1990, 1992 and 1996 campaigns. PDSR (the Romanian Social Democracy Party) had launched it on the market as a diversion method to sidetrack the attention from the weak realizations of the government and PRM (the Big Romania party) and PUNR (the Romanian National Union Party) had used it to capitalize sympathy in default of other political offers. Besides populism, the nationalism was the factor that has mostly poisoned the atmosphere of the electoral debates until now. In this year campaign the populism reappeared but the nationalism is still waited for. Is this observation a reason of optimism? Probably not. The lack of nationalism in the public debate is not the effect of the parties' lack of vocation in the field of patriotic demagogy, but the result of some strategic calculations. PDSR, the main beneficiary of the nationalist discourse, has well-grounded reasons this time to refrain from risking declarations. The first of them refers to the precariousness of the extern image of the party and of its leader, Ion Iliescu. Among the first three things that are reproached in the occident to the former President there is nationalism. No one can forget the fact that Iliescu regime cultivated suspicion towards the Hungarians and favored the inter-ethnic conflicts. A second reason for which PDSR doesn't plus on the nationalist aspect is the calculation regarding the future governing coalition. The PDSR leaders don't keep secret any more the availa