America and the World

It goes without saying (but perhaps it should be said) that I like so many others cannot wait for this most disastrous of American presidential terms to end and for the present incumbent to go and get lost somewhere. Here is a man who has added strife to the world, and yet been useless when something useful was needed. Serving economic interests, George Bush has been blinkered. He confirmed my suspicion that Tony Blair was never the strong Prime Minister of the publicity, but blew in the wind according to the greatest wind, and this is what he did under George Bush. More than this, Bush is partly to blame for Blair ending his time in office in a delusional state, believing his own mind for policy decisions more that seeking out evidence, an in-his-head conviction that ended up with all this nonsensical Blair knows all about religions stuff that has turned into a ridiculous foundation for something of money and his name that communities have done carefully for a long time already.

So many hope that Barack Obama might just get through the United States General Election and make a difference. It was noticable that the very next day after obtaining enough delegates to win the nomination that he trimmed his message. He shifts his message for this interest group and that one, like a good politician. Well, he does have to get elected. After all, we never even had the progressive rhetoric from Tony Blair: his was a middle class appeal of New Labour and effectively a safe way for removing the Tories. He did have a social conscience and economic efficiency combined message, but was always dazzled by people with lots of money, and power, and thus he got into sleeze and not quite telling it as it was.

A friend of mine tells me that her wealthy Texan boyfriend in America voted in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton against Obama, and will vote for McCain in the General Election. She'd indicated in the past a certain amount of ongoing racism in this person. Obama has to get people to vote who characteristically vote less (it is why Labour moved so far to the right here - to draw on those more likely to vote) and he may be able to motivate such black and young otherwise non-voters. He will have to do this, and he will have to draw on the bruised Hillary Clinton to see if she can get him some of the non-black blue collar voters that became her speciality, in that there is not a little racism there too.

From this end of things even John McCain would be a relief from this idiot still in the White House. However, he does not seem to represent much, and if one thing has emerged in British politics (if not American) it is ageism: witness why Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats did not stand for the leadership after his business managerial background gave him such confidence in public settings at which a few words could knock out Gordon Brown, and with frequency. The only issue about someone who is 71 is his actual fitness age: mind and body. He seems to have an awkward speaking manner, but this is hardly relevant. It is said that Obama tapped into the civil religion of the United States: the dispersal of the sacred into the secular that has general and aspirational sentiments. Maybe, but McCain does this too. It's that Obama sounds like he is preaching too, which (at least in the UK) could be a weakness as well as a strength.