A weak Republican field

The US elections are coming faster than a randy teenager who's left his bedroom door open when his parents are downstairs. Much like the aforementioned situation, they are always exhilarating and dangerous. At the moment, it’s the Republican nominations that are taking up valuable headline space. They are not too dissimilar to an arrogant, terrible, and loud punk-rock band: they shout incoherently about how great they are when all the evidence seems to suggest the opposite. If I’m honest, I think that the Republican field is incredibly week this time around. Even John McCain maybe thinks so: he accidentally endorsed Obama and not Romney in what I can only imagine was a Freudian slip. I want to waste your time by immaturely discussing the potential (and real) candidates.

This year, some wild cards have been throwing their hats into the ring. There was the brief period when Donald Trump looked like he was going to run. I can’t imagine him being the people’s candidate, given that he is possibly the least humble and relatable man in America. In fact, he’s made some statements that are so incredibly douchey that I almost started assuming irony. Until, with a sigh, I realised whom I was thinking of. Prime example of this is when he uttered the phrase: “Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich”. Replace “beauty” with “fundamental characteristics” and “very rich” with “a massive dickhead” and then the sentence becomes accurate. Sarah Palin threatened to run, but, if you ask me, and I guess you sort of unwillingly are if you’re reading this, she prefers campaigning and celebrity status; she doesn’t seem to actually want to do the job, she’d rather just complain about how others are. Then there was Michelle Bachmann – whose husband allegedly tried to cure people of homosexuality. Unfortunately, he couldn’t cure himself of stupidity, or his wife for that matter. If you want to donate to the “buy a Bachmann a brain cell” campaign, please do so by buying me a drink in the Union.

Donald Trump... made some statements that are so incredibly douchey that I almost started assuming irony

The two front-runners, it seems, are Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. So far, it hasn’t been a friendly rivalry. The gloves are so far removed from their hands that only the Hubble telescope is capable of picturing them. Of course the attack ad is the embodiment of this. It’s now somewhat of a tradition. One ad that particularly caught my eye was Newt Gingrich’s attack against Mitt Romney that built up to the shocking truth: “and just like John Kerry… he speaks French”. First of all, this is confusing an ability that could only improve foreign relations with something that is a hindrance. Secondly, and importantly, the footage of Mitt Romney ‘speaking French’ consists of Romney saying: “Bonjour, je m’appelle Mitt Romney”. He’s not exactly discussing philosophy at the Sorbonne now is he? With my extremely limited capability at French (my family will fully back me up on this) I think I could possibly manage that – and this is coming from a person who got a B in GCSE French and still thinks the only explanation is that they wrote “U” incorrectly on the certificate.

Romney is not exactly innocent in this mud slinging match. On his website there is a whole section of videos titled “unreliable leader”. At first, I thought that this was the first incidence of someone making attack ads against themselves. It turns out they are all referencing Gingrich.

This is just the foreplay though; the main event is still to come. The big race to the White House isn’t in full swing yet (we would all definitely know if it had as it would be impossible to miss). There’s one issue that continues to bug me about the US electoral system, besides some of the candidates. It’s the small point of how the votes are counted and how the election result is decided. I can understand why you would have a Senate and a House in which each state locally elects someone to go and sit for them. (Although, I should hasten to note, there is still the argument that it shouldn’t be this way and that proportional representation is a better system, but that’s a different debate.) However, I cannot understand why, when electing the President, they have the points system whereby each state has different points and everything’s muddled and weird. It basically ends up meaning someone in one state will have a more important say than someone in another state. Why not have it just as whoever gets the most votes wins? That’s simple and democratic. When I think of the system they have in place, I feel like I’m in a lecture where some maths is involved: I understand the how, but the why is still a bit of a mystery. In fact, that’s sometimes the feeling I get when I think about how any politicians got into their positions of power.