A breath of fresh air....
It has been illuminating to follow the US media coverage of the UK elections, which has perked up considerably in the past week or so. There has been some amusingly wry commentary from the US press, notably The Lede in the NY Times and Jon Stewart's excellent take on 'Bigotgate' and the 'laughable tameness of British political scandals'. There was a particularly interesting discussion of the campaign this morning on National Public Radio's Diane Rehm Show. One of the guests was Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of slate.com, who has spent the past three weeks in the UK on a 'hack's holiday'. (His article in The Guardian describing his stay is here). Weisberg casts a very positive light on the British election campaign, which he described as 'pure' when compared with the antics of the Americans. Although acknowledging that this campaign has been perhaps more 'americanised' than previous elections, largely as a result of the TV debates, Weisberg maintains the UK election is a 'breath of fresh air', drawing out the contrasts between the way in which the Brits and the Americans conduct themselves:
" [The British] do not have a process that revolves around the raising and spending of huge sums of money as we do; they do not have a process that revolves around television advertising, in particular the effect of negative thirty-second spots; they don't have the security apparatus that we have here...the candidates move quite freely, people can walk up to them, within some bounds; ....you don't really have the whole parasitic decadence of what American presidential campaigns have become..."
Weisberg was also rather taken with the 'civilised' four week period of official electioneering in the UK, compared to the 'permanent campaign' of US presidential politics, and praised the fact that the parties all publish manifestoes that the public can actually access and engage with. Listening to all that made me feel quite pleased to be British, although not as pleased as I would be if the seats in parliament actually reflected the views of the populace.
I must admit that the British election has been a welcome distraction from the issues that are currently dominating US political discourse: the divisive Arizona immigration legislation; rabid tea partiers raving about socialism; John McCain's barmy push for DC gun laws to be relaxed, despite the fact that no-one in the city actually agrees with him. Listening to the civilised discussion about the UK election has been a welcome relief and reminded me how close the three main UK parties are on many policy issues. And it feels so refreshing that guns, religion and abortion just don't feature in the debate.
Nevertheless, it has been rather strange to be participating in this election at a distance. (But participate we did, managing to get our postal votes back to the UK in the nick of time, despite Eyjafjallajokull's best efforts). I have been avidly scouring the UK blogs and news sites for the latest shifts in public opinion, and tuning in to Radio 4 even more obsessively than usual - albeit in a rather oddly jet-lagged fashion, listening to World at One in the morning, PM at midday and The World Tonight at teatime. Which means that I am entirely reliant on the media and have no sense at all of the public mood, except for that which I can glean online. Jonathan Raban's article in the New York Review of Books at the weekend captures this exactly - and is one reason he cautions against undertaking any analysis at a 5000-mile remove. As Raban notes, it's just not the same when you can't wander down to your local pub to sound out the mood. It was only on Sunday, when a friend at home mentioned how everyone had their election posters on display in their gardens, that I realised how much I've missed out on.
And on the theme of missing out, Simon will be attending an election night party at the Embassy this evening, to which spouses are not invited. So I will be having a little election party of my own. Guests so far are me, Alex, the BBC website, a chicken pot pie, a bottle of wine and a pile of ironing. Not quite the whirlwind of glamour and glitz that I was envisaging when I signed up for this diplomatic gig. I guess I should have read the manifesto more carefully.
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