Spare us the US party posturing (From York Press)

Spare us the US party posturing

9:17am Friday 3rd February 2012 in Columnists By Megi Rychlikova, megi.rychlikova@thepress.co.uk

Why oh why do the media believe we want to hear all about internal party elections of the great US of A?

No doubt it is fascinating to aficionados of the American political scene, but at this stage I couldn’t care less who may or may not be the Republican candidate to challenge President Obama at the end of the year.

The presidential elections are not until November. That’s ten whole months away. And yet, for the best part of a year already, we have had endless speculation about will he/she won’t he/she stand, yes, he/she is standing, actually, he/she has changed his/her mind and thinks it should be her/him, so he/she is standing down live on British television.

And all that happened before the voters of somewhere small and snowy and American were asked to cast their vote.

I had never heard of any of the presidential hopefuls before and I doubt I will ever hear of them again.

There is just one reason I am interested in the Republican presidential elections and that is as light entertainment. I marvel at the infinite ability of the Americans to find people totally unsuited to be presidents.

Remember the one who was crazy about witches, or the Tea Party, which likes clichés from somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan?

The trouble is, the wildly unlikely to win candidates have more or less been winnowed out now, and we still have another ten months ahead of endless electioneering and posturing on podiums.

So could the British media please bring home their hordes of cameras and journalists currently pursuing Republican politicians all over the United States and put them to more useful work such as covering Europe, India and China.

They could educate our businessmen and others wanting to export or travel to those countries about their politics and general culture. That would be far more useful to Britain than the minutiae of politics in a country we already know far too much about.

Yes, the USA is the most powerful country in the world. Yes, it is important who leads it and his or her policies. But the time for thinking about that is when we know who the presidential candidates are next November, and we don’t need to watch every twist or turn of their campaigns. We just need a general summary of what they stand for in the run-up to election day, roughly what we get for elections in every other country in which British citizens don’t have a vote.

Hold on a minute. I’ve just thought of a reason why we should be interested in American elections. They show us why big money should be kept out of politics.

According to the commentators, Mitt Romney “won” Florida this week because he poured money into his campaign there.

Senators start fundraising for their re-election the day after they are elected for their six-year term because they need so much. The result is that American politicians are highly vulnerable to pressure from people with big pockets and often it’s not their politics that matter, but their money and their acting ability.

How else could a B-rate actor whose only talent was to appear sincere on camera get elected to the White House? Is it a complete coincidence that the USA is the only major country not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, when the bosses of its big polluting industries fund politicians’ campaigns?

So next time the British media cover an American election, I ask them to publish comprehensive lists of each politician’s financial supporters, with their donations and commercial interests as an object lesson in what politics should not be. But please, not until November.