US Elections 2004

It’s election day in the US and it’s possibly the most important election we’ve seen in a long time. I tried to keep politics out of this blog, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me this one time. I’m not going to stand here and tell my American readers what to do. It’s your elections and at the end of the day the buck stops with you. However as one of your allies in the world, if your friends lean over to you at a party and tell you that you’ve had too much to drink and are making a fool of yourself, it’s probably worth listening to. If you choose to carry on, when you wake up in the morning with a screaming headache and the realisation that you pissed everybody else off at the party and won’t be invited again, you’ll only have yourself to blame.

I’m sure most of you would have made up their minds weeks, if not months ago. With early voting many of you will have already had your say. As it stands the elections results will be decided by around a million undecided voters in half a dozen swing states. It will be decided by glossy commercials, staged appearances and millions upon millions of dollars, all of which will need to be paid back in one way or another.

At the end of the day, this election will determine how the worlds largest super power is perceived by the rest of the world. Do you want to be seen as the popular kid? The one everybody wants to be like, who gets invited to all the cool parties, gets admired by all the cute girls and is nominated “most likely to succeed”. Or do you want to be seen as the hard drinking tough kid. The one who pushes the smaller kids and gets away with it because he’s bigger than everybody else and has equally tough friends.