Across the Pond

by Mark Bastable

So, here on the Eastern side of the Atlantic, we're watching the wonderfully entertaining son-et-lumiere that you call the Presidential Primaries. Or perhaps you don't. Maybe that's just what we call them. Anyway, it's a riot.

Laugh? It's possible our socks will never dry.

I just read a piece in one of the Big Papers about George Dubya's campaign. Two years planning, more spin than a flipped coin, infinite clinical interest in the choice of suit, humiliation in New Hampshire. It's a real gas.

Okay - maybe you think it's funny too. If you do, its probably because you see it as soap-opera. But we think it's funny because it's so *American* - all that stage management and split-second timing and digitally enhanced teeth. All that *money*, for God's sake.

Here, politics has always been seen as a calling -a sort of noble amateurism. We just don't trust people who are "good" at it. We like out politicians bumbling and ash-dappled and - best of all - indiscreet.

As I write, we're winding up to a mayoral election here in London. The favourite, so the bookies say, is a self-confessed left-wing populist who tends newts for a hobby. Here, newts are an attribute of lovable- ness. There, they are candidates.

Do we want Red Ken (as he's known in the tabloids) because his policies are sound, his plans workable and his ethics pristine? No - we want him because his election would not merely disconcert the Opposition, it would also totally piss off his "own" party. They've been assiduously and none-too-subtly trying to get rid of him for months. To challenge him, within the party itself, they've put forward a reluctant patsy who winces every time he has to trot out the accepted lines.

We don't want the patsy. We want Ken. We love Ken because he's funny. For instance, a few years back, on April 1st, he appeared on Breakfast TV, saying that London was going to pioneer the change from driving on the left-hand side of the road to driving on the right. This would bring us in line with the rest of Europe.

"Obviously", he said, "this is not a change you can make overnight. So we're going to phase it in. The lorries and commercial vehicles will shift on 1st May, and domestic vehicles two months later."

"But, but," stammered the perplexed interviewer, "what will happen at the edge of town, where everyone is still driving on the left?"

Ken bridled. "Well, it's 'exactly' that kind of negativity I've come to expect from the media," he huffed.

Can you imagine a Presidential candidate pulling that kind of scam, just for laughs? You can almost hear the campaign workers clutching at their hearts and sliding slowly down the wall of the media-center.

And quite right too. I mean, you're about to elect someone to the position of Most Powerful Man in the World. (And, incidentally, when are you thinking of putting a woman in there?) So - do you really want to entrust the fate of the planet to someone who is prepared to have a bit of a giggle at the expense of the media, the public - at the expense of Humankind, in short? I mean, what if he decided one late night to nuke Paris just because he was allergic to Brie?

No. That would be just silly. You need a reasonable, mature, intelligent, sane, serious guy in the White House. Like you've got now. I'd go for George Dubya, if I were you.