Watching America

It may go on forever but we are now moving into the end game of the American Presidential race and this is the bit where it starts to get good.
The passion showed by the audience always strikes me mainly because here nobody gets passionate about their political groups, at least not to this extent.
While Romney and Obama can call on some big names in entertainment to endorse them, even if they raise eyebrows like Clint Eastwood and the empty chair bizarreness, it is hard to find any entertainer in the UK who would put their head above the parapet for one of our political parties.
Then there is the enthusiasm shown at the party conferences with the over the top jingoism, flag waving and enthusisatic hand clapping. I have seem some tears as well and the last time a British politician made anyone cry was when they shut down yet another Remploy centre.
Then there are the attack ads which are brilliant and borderline mad ranging from 'Romney is a sociopath because he forcibly cut the hair of a gay teenager in high school' to 'Obama stops kids celebrating Christmas'. Brilliantly barmy.
My favourite part is when the two of them stop off at schools and colleges across the country to do some tub thumping and hand-pick the audience that is going to stand directly behind them in camera-shot and every colour and creed of person will be represented as if Romney doesn't have an Asian student somewhere behind him he will be accused of neglecting the Chinese Americans.
Then there are the Presidents wives who get there own spot to heap praise upon their husbands as if they would tell the listening public that he is a miserable sod who she wouldn't even trust to defrost the freezer let alone run a country. The right honourable Tony Blair's wife, Cherie, tried to raise her profile off the back of her husbands job and the press did a right job on her, digging down into her private life to put her back in her place and ridiculing her belief in crystals and leading to a tearful scene on TV when her purchase of two flats with the help of a convicted fraudster was exposed.
Finally it is the way that at some point each hopeful will have to set out how they will protect and fund the protection of another country, Israel, or face the wrath of their own countrymen and that which always amuses me. I don't think any leader of any other country anywhere else in the World has to appease the public of another country in order to gain the election in his own nation.
Yes it is long and mostly boring and in truth doesn't concern us but i do like the razzmatazz and the utter madness of the American election.