The Apathetic American: Well hung, Britain!

George Pokorny compares the current "spewing of political gibberish" to the past US elections. Photo credit: Andy Clarke

What an entertaining mess this election has turned out to be. Unable to affect the results in any way I am observing the ongoing outcome with spirited indifference. I am indifferent because I am not allowed to be otherwise.

While the result will directly affect my daily life, I have no say in the matter. and therefore really couldn’t care less about the ultimate resolution. However, I am spirited because watching it all unravel is tons of fun. It is at once educational and entertaining, like a David Attenborough nature program. Only instead of primates flinging feces we have political pundits spewing gibberish and counter-gibberish while the whole of the BBC news organization is narrating with minute-by-minute accounts of the whereabouts and happenings of the three leaders. Gordon Brown has been at his home in Scotland most of the morning. Fascinating.

Of course, I cannot help making comparisons to our own election debacle in the US ten years ago. Then, as now, while we inch closer to resolution the nation was inundated day and night by all manner of possibilities, each seemingly less likely than the last. In one month we learned more about our electoral system than we ever could in a lifetime of civics classes. Would there be a recount in Dade county? Would the electoral college debate the winner and what compromises would be made to ensure a winner? Would the loser take the matter to the Supreme Court or immediately press his party for articles of impeachment? In the end it was all a bit of a let-down as the matter was solved relatively quickly and decisively and without the exploding fun of a live battle in the US House of Representatives.

The biggest difference between this campaign and the Y2K election was that we saw it coming and could prepare for it. Right now there are thousands of protesters outside the Lib Dem offices in Westminster all shouting slogans, displaying placards and wearing the same colour. One wonders if they would be so well organized had they not seen this coming. Indeed since well before the campaign commenced the media have been pushing the notion of not having a clear winner and pressing Nick Clegg at almost every turn about his pending status as kingmaker. After his success in the first debate, however, things really kicked into gear as the political presses smelled potential chaos and stepped over themselves to educate the masses.

We now all understand that to secure power a party must get 326 seats. Or is it 320, because the Sinn Fein folk don’t vote? Or is it 325 because the Green Party gained a seat? The Independent newspaper extolled three different ways that any single party could get majority of the overall votes, but still rank third in the number of seats in parliament. The trouble is, none of this parliamentary education really helped people decide for whom to vote. Which is fine by me, otherwise we would miss all the fun.