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Aug 27, 2004 As an Englishman who can never hope to understand the rules of American football or politics (both seem to involve a lot of standing around while someone screams "foul" at the referee or speaker), the recent Democratic Convention was no less of a mystery. Great Britain is slightly smaller than the average Vons parking lot and has strict financial and spatial limits on political self-aggrandizement. The last time we saw anything approaching the scale of the Boston Convention was a few years back when Labour's Neil Kinnock addressed the faithful at Sheffield Football Stadium. Kinnock thought he had it in the bag, but the political stage-management team made the event look and sound too much like "Triumph of the Will", Leni Riefenstahl's 1934 film of a Hitler rally, and he lost the election. US political conventions are on a staggeringly huge scale. The Democrats held theirs in a building bigger than Hawaii. And amazingly they filled it. It was a wall- to-wall sea of faces from across the country, some of whom had traveled thousands of miles to wave bunting at a monumentally rich and boring man seeking election as "The Most Powerful Man in the World". Next week the Republicans hold their own convention at Madison Square Garden. Crawford, Texas will be a ghost town as its good people join another sea of faces waving bunting at another monumentally rich and boring (and condescending) man seeking re-election as "The Most Powerful Man in the World." (Memo to John Kerry and George W. Bush: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has already awarded himself this accolade and now has his beady eye set on becoming King of Europe). Here's the mystery. What makes either of them especially suited to the job of President? Are they really the two most eloquent exponents of Democratic and Republican sentiment to be found in America? Exactly why are these monumentally rich and boring men each spending in excess of $5,000,000 (a small part of it their own) to land a job that pays about $250,000 a year? It's one hell of a way to land a book deal. Exercise your democratic right in November. Vote Boring. ------------ About the author Simon Wood: I am from England, currently living in California. I have just completed Fairy Story, a children's fantasy adventure, and embarked on a second. I can be found at: www.writers.net/writers/34102 Email: simonwoodca2004@sbcglobal.net Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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