2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumGuardian - "US election: an Obama win is the best outcome for all"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/04/observer-editorial-obama-best-man-to-winBarack Obama is a thoughtful man who has brought a new dignity to the White House
"One of the less convincing critiques of the US presidential election campaign, which winds up on Tuesday, is that there has not been much to choose between the incumbent, President Obama, and his challenger, Mitt Romney.
The reality is very different. Instead, a stark choice exists. One can only judge a candidate on his past record and on what he has pledged to do in the future. Romney has said and done a lot of things, many contradictory, some deliberately so. It has been very hard to know during the campaign which Romney is real: the man who backed the precursor of Obamacare when he was governor or the candidate who suggested to donors that almost half of Americans were welfare beneficiaries beyond his political reach? Is he the centrist Republican of the first presidential debate or the man who insisted during the primaries he was "severely conservative"?
Doubts about Romney have accrued not only from his ever shifting politics but also from a wider sense of flakiness. His economic policies have a touch of the fantastic. Romney would enact large tax cuts, reducing revenue, while increasing defence spending sharply, but also arguing he would eat into the deficit by spending cuts alone.
On foreign policy too, Romney represents a return to the disastrous years of George W Bush threatening confrontation with China by saying he would list it as a currency manipulator, while making bellicose noises about conflict with Iran."
snip
TroyD
(4,551 posts)Anyway, that's good.
NRaleighLiberal
(60,019 posts)greatauntoftriplets
(175,749 posts)It's no wonder they're scared shitless of him!
Raster
(20,998 posts)CorBlimeyGuvnor
(105 posts)greatauntoftriplets
(175,749 posts)The American electorate needs to listen to our friends (and family, in my case) on the other side of the pond.
justabob
(3,069 posts)LOL.... yeah, that is one way to say it.
LeftishBrit
(41,210 posts)The American president has huge influence on lots of things in the rest of the world, especially the UK, given the 'special relationship'. In a lot of things relating to foreign policy and the economy, we really are fighting together.
Pity that the British are often not as clear-eyed about our own elections. Cameron et al (admittedly 'elected' with 36% of the vote!) are absolutely awful. Even the supposedly-Labour Blair the Poodle wasn't exactly much to write home about.
Unfortunately our former defence secretary Liam Fox has been involved in advising the Romney campaign! Urgh!
Romney is absolutely lacking in diplomatic skills, and when he visited England last year, managed to get entirely on the wrong side of the Brits, even many Conservative ones.