How come all you people out there like Ladytizzy and Matthew and Senex are so forgiving. There was I carelessly promising to continue blogging while away – and didn’t; only to come back and find the stalwarts such as Lords Norton, Tyler and Soley and Lady Murphy being entirely faithful.
Anyway I said I would find out what the local feelings are about the coming elections while I was in the US. Complicated and divided as everyone here knows and I haven’t much new to add. Things change all the time and today’s broadcasts of Hillary Clinton’s speech will I suspect do much for Barrack Obama’s chances. My sister who lives on Cape Cod is a devoted Obama supporter, my brother-in-law ( who went to naval college with John McCain) is, as one might expect, a McCain supporter and each have stickers on their respective cars. Their friends are mostly Obama fans but this is a tiny sample of an East coast coterie who can afford to be very liberal. My brother-in-law, a thoughtful and moderate man, feels that experience is essential; I will find out from him if the appointment of Biden as VP has in any way affected his choice.
I have spent a huge amount of time in America over the years and moved from sheer enchantment with the glamour of it all when I was a teenager to a middle-aged irritation with the arrogant expectations of very privileged people. Especially when abroad; sitting in some muddy and hot African roadside shack, which I have also done a lot of, and hearing our friends from across the pond order ‘coffee and juice’ for breakfast was painful, when the nearest thing available was a dried husk of maize.
This time I think I got the balance better; we had the most wonderful time with warm, outgoing, immensely generous friends – all of whom invited us for meals and drinks, not batting an eye at the size of our extended family grouping – at one point 18! We whale-watched, sailed, kyaked, surfed, clammed – ate lobster and waffles (not together) and found our host nation to be endlessly pleasant and always courteous. The tv stations I watched seemed concerned and focussed on world news. A great many people I talked to were desperately worried about US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan and wanted to see troop withdrawal not only because of the hideous death toll but also because it offended their sense of what was a democratic intervention and what was not.
But as I say I was talking to Cape Codders, not representative necessarily of the great America but indicative of something which I feel has shifted in the US since I last spent any amount of time there.
What a wonderful time you’ve had and deservedly so.
Barrak Obama is a first generation African American who has none of the associations that normally come with the label. If this was a weakness then his wife makes up for it by representing the best that African Americans can achieve.
John McCain is to be congratulated too in his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin As Vice Presidential Running Mate. McCain is an old man who offers the US the prospect of a women President should he have to retire for ill health reasons. In this respect he has outdone Barrack Obama who was unable to choose Hilary Clinton as Presidential running mate.
The successful candidate will have an uphill struggle to wean America off of its heavy dependency on oil whilst peacefully coexisting with a powerful oil industry lobby.
Hey, we all have our own lives. Not posting is not a crime.
Apologies for spelling the Barack in Obama as Barrack…
barrack[bar·rack || ‘bærək]
v. loudly encourage, loudly disapprove (at a sporting event); voice opinions loudly
thanks senex and hifranc and also for the spelling correction – I suppose my main worry is if John McCain suffers a stroke or has a heart attack, do we really believe that Mrs Palin will be able to deal with a complex and dangerous world safely? OK one could argue that it is not being dealt with safely at the moment but I have yet to be convinced that Mrs Palin has a world view built on some experience?
The Obama/Biden ticket it seems is more seasoned?
If people attack Obama for a lack of experience (who has traveled extensively internationally and been a member of the Senate for at least a few years), their fears should be put to rest by the nomination of Biden for VP. Palin, on the other hand, is completely inexperienced on the national level and has, to my knowledge, no foreign experience. As someone who values foreign diplomatic policy even slightly higher than domestic economic and education policies, McCain/Palin is just too weak a ticket for me.
That being said, I did want to offer that I’m glad your stay in the United States was so pleasant! If there’s one good thing to come out of the Bush administration, it is that more people are more interested and involved in politics than they have been for the last 20-30 years, it seems. While cynicism and disenchantment has not yet waned, activity is at least on the rise, and people are educating themselves and will hopefully make informed, well considered choices in the upcoming election.