I've no right to complain I suppose
The same thing happens to me whenever there's a general election on. I'm sure I bored my non-Canadian, non-political readers into a coma by my gleefully minute cataloguing of the Canadian candidates' shennanigans.
Still, I'm wondering why the Americans have to have such very long campaigns. It seems to go on for years. Or at least months, during which we all have to just look elsewhere for entertainment than our favourite US bloggers.
Sorry guys, but the minutiae of US presidential primaries with their incomprehensible, Byzantine rules and activities, holds the attention of the rest of us for about...say...ten or fifteen minutes. After a week, I'm pretty much glazing over. And now, after half a year of it, I'm reduced to wondering what Brad and Angelina are up to.
And you haven't even got to the election campaigning yet.
We don't find it interesting either. More annoying than anything else.
ReplyDeleteMildly interesting of itself and oddly compelling once you start to watch it. Rather like curling in that respect.
ReplyDelete"Still, I'm wondering why the Americans have to have such very long campaigns."
ReplyDeleteI think perhaps it lies in the fact that constitutionally our election dates are cast in stone.
The U.K. has an election when the PM says you'll have an election – and it will be a matter of months not years. But we always know when the next one is coming up. And they'll be another one in 2012. And one in 2016. It makes long-range positioning and planning mandatory. Can't let the other fellow get ahead. And the various states keep pushing their primaries further back so as not to be the last one. If you're at the tail end, the decision has likely already been made – Senator Suckbribe has already gathered enough convention votes to snag the nomination -- and your state's votes don't “count”.
And it does seem an interesting co-incidence that as the differences amongst the two major parties and the MSM approved candidates become more and more difficult to detect, the campaigns become longer, louder, more expensive, fill more television time, and chew up more newsprint than ever before. Once there is no difference at all we may have a continuous series of four year back-to-back campaigns stretching out forever. Or until some Julius Caesar type gets fed up with the farce and puts and end to it all.
aaaauuuughhh!
ReplyDeleteHe's trying to explain it to me!
Someone stop him!
ahem...
In Canuckistan, the PM calls it and it's five weeks.
Makes for quite a frenzy.
love the election. Obama seems to finally have Clinton on the run. Gotta love how she is getting crushed in the last 5 primaries. Huckabee is still pulling unexpected big wins. The stakes couldn't be higher, the world's biggest economy.
ReplyDelete