The US presidential debate, played out in full on radio 5 was unedifying. It featured a conflicted felon beating up an 82 year old man who seemed mildly demented. To coin a phrase from the previous night’s UK debate “is this the best the US can do?”
The democrats seem disappointed.
The democrats, within months of a fixed term election are now asking if their president is too old and too frail to stand. How is he standing?
In the UK , Nigel Farage described himself exhausted in his early 60s, he has – it is true – to fight to keep his party free of candidates claiming they want immigrants shot on arrival.
These aberrations are partly a result of the early calling of an election that has left us with “bet-gate” and candidate solecisms as the major news items.
In the US, the presidential candidature is two years in the making, the election date predicted years in advance. My point is that we should not be being shocked by one presidential candidate’s inability to answer a question , because he was seemingly past his bed-time.
The US election may well “go down to the wire”, because the republicans are fielding a crook who appears to be bigger than there governance process. Trump is also a man who was complicit to an insurrection from his supporters after the last election and someone reviled the world over for his behaviour, his views and his hostile mode of expression.
Are we bothered if the US political system is crap?
Frankly yes. Because we are, despite Brexit, Trump and Farage, still living relatively peacefully because of institutions like NATO and the UN. These are funded by the major western democracies and in particular by America and if America becomes isolationist, stops supporting the peace and puts its own interests in front of those of the planet, it will be the worst for all of us.
We are in a climate emergency, one that America seems to feel it can manage for itself. Despite the widespread devastation in recent summers due to extreme weather, the majority of Americans seem to be asking “crisis what crisis”.
Four years on from the onset of the pandemic, three years on from the outbreak of war on our doorstep, we appear to have become immunised to new shocks to the point where we consider what is going on in the US presidential election an amusing sideshow.
Politics should be a young person’s game
America had in Obama, a truly great president. It seems inconceivable that a country its size, with its educational system, its opportunity and its energy, cannot throw up a democratic presidential nominee better than Jo Biden.
I realise that these rough-house debates are artificial and do not reflect the day to day challenge of being a president, but they are what America takes as a proxy for presidential performance and they do matter. They seem to matter more than the UK equivalent.
Maybe it is too late to change horses in mid-stream, but what I listened to last night suggests to me that Biden has deteriorated since 2020 and he will not be better in 2028. Can America or the West feel confident having this man leading the free world?
This should not be a question, Biden should not be in question, he should politely step aside and the Democrats should quickly get on with putting someone young and agile in charge. That person does not necessarily have to be a man.
