There are some things you don't expect in life. For example, after I inadvertently dropped my $300 cell phone in an underground parking garage in San Francisco at 9.30am today, I didn't expect to find it there - lying next to where my car had been - at 9.20pm this evening.
I won't pretend I thought the phone was still there because my fellow parkers were honest enough not to steal it. I firmly believe that if the parking garage down at level 3A wasn't pitch dark...it would have been gone, and I would have spent the whole day tomorrow thinking that my phone might have been ringing with important news if I hadn't lost it somewhere today. Anyway, that was cool, and I didn't expect the "I've lost my damn phone" story to turn out well.
What I do think I have a right to expect is that the next President of the USA will be elected on the basis of being well-qualified, intelligent, logical, ambitious, pragmatic, and not simply driven by a desire to win (or purchase) 51% of the vote. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I hope they are driven to do what is right, not necessarily what is popular.
Sadly, unlike the story of my cell phone, I don't expect that story to end well. One week after the 'big names' - Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - announced their candidacy, my hopes that the next President will put an end to America's era of ignorant foreign policy and rampant debt escalation are all but dashed.
Why is it that US politics is all about spouting populist, patriotic, lowest-common-denominator rhetorical crap? For a country so proud of its heritage as America, it's amazing its people don't demand more. If politics was done this way in Britain, TV screens would be full every night with East-end geezers ranting "that bloke's full of populist, patriotic crap"...and then someone else would come up with some better policies, publish them for everyone to see in Tesco, and they'd get elected.
Anyway, given that we're about to start two years of 24/7/365 Hillary and Barack TV coverage, I thought I may as well make an early request here that they find something interesting to say.
Oh, and if you don't believe there's a snoozefest in store, check out the celebrations of the banal available at Barack and Hillary's sites. Nothing there to upset anyone at all, oh no. Just lots of nice, bland, 51%-of-the-vote sort of stuff. Bring it on!
People get the governments they deserve. Given that, at the last count, 50.7% of the American population are idiots, that is why you currently have a Halfwit as president. Don't start with changing the government, start by changing the electorate. Start with Utah! I think it's called "Regime change"
Posted by: Ian | January 26, 2007 at 01:29 AM