President-elect Romney walked on stage and saluted the cheering crowd - the thousands of his supporters gathered in the auditorium, waving their Republican flags and Vote Mitt banners, who'd been on their feet all day getting out the vote, and watching the giant TV screens throughout the night as news flashed up that state after state had been won. He raised his hand to bid them to be quiet, then started to speak. Friends, fellow Republicans, fellow Americans of this great country we call home...I have just spoken on the telephone to President Obama, who has graciously conceded defeat in this election...
The world has breathed a collective sigh of relief. I'm not sure whether it was ready for a Romney presidency; his foreign policies were a little flaky to say the least, and with the exception of Israel, he'd made very few friends (and not a few enemies) among other governments. It says something about the state of the Republican Party when a politician like him is seen as something of a moderate, and that points to the deep-seated psychological malaise which is at the core of American politics - and, dare I say it, at the core of American life itself. Like the Tories in this country, the Republicans seem to think they have a God-given right to rule - witness Donald Trump flipping his wig in a twitter meltdown after Obama had been declared the winner.
There also seems to have been a very swift re-writing of recent history since the result was announced this morning. For weeks, the media had been telling us the election was too close to call, and that things were going to go down to the wire. The prospect of a President Mitt was, we were told, a very real one. In the end, Obama won fairly comfortably, albeit with a very much reduced vote. Now we're being told that the experts had it right all along. I must have missed that...
It doesn't take much of a conspiracy theorist to realise that a one-sided race wouldn't be very good news for the media and advertising empires, who would have a lot of dead airtime to fill.
The whole election campaign, and the coverage of it, has been as carefully choreographed and manipulated as any reality TV show, while the democratic process has taken a back seat.
God bless America.
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