While abroad I was able to follow American politics pretty closely thanks to our wonderful wired modern world. But one of the great things about this past year is it has given me a little more perspective about how people look at one another's politics. Consider the Sarah Palin nomination, which to me is probably the least funny thing to ever happen in American politics, but to the rest of the world is kinda amusing. In a column in the Telegraph last week, Mary Riddell lamented a bit jealously that UK conservatives weren't as colorful.
"We're playing personality politics without the personalities and, in that climate, woe betide any grey figure bold enough... to stick his eyebrows above the parapet.
"Can no Tory front-bencher conjure up a pregnant teenage daughter and a non-Etonian 'redneck' boyfriend?"
Crimmy, serious people debating serious issues about the nation and its future, without the reality television show bullsh*t? Sounds great to me.
When seen from the outside looking in, political life tends to flatten and simplify in distorting ways. On a serious note, it means that Americans refuse to acknowledge the political complexity and nuance of today's Russia in favor of a simple "the USSR is back!" narrative (which makes a dummy like Mikheil Saakashvili the inexplicable underdog freedom fighter). But on a personality level, it works the same way. We look at Nicolas Sarkozy, jet-setting with his hot new model/singer wife, or Silvio Berlusconi penning syrupy love songs with cruise ship lounge singers, and we ask ourselves how anybody could possibly take these people seriously. Well, here we have Sarah Palin, and I'm asking the same question (not two years ago, she was the mayor of a town smaller than Williamstown. Have you seen its "City Hall"?).
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