Musings on the US Primaries

[4thofeleven]

So, looks like the US Democratic primaries are finally over, which means Americans have got just another five months of regular campaigning before they finally get to the election! Was this system deliberately designed to ensure that everyone’s lost interest by the time the ballots open, or is it just coincidence? Hell, I’m sick of the campaign already, and I’m not even in the US…

I have to say, I find Obama very hard to like. I do not understand what it is about him that has American liberals so fired up about him. His speeches seem vague and rarely seem to have a point, and he seems really uncomfortable when interacting with people one-on-one. ‘Hope’ and ‘change’ really don’t strike me as automatically positive things, unless you clarify what specifically you intend to change and why one should be optimistic. Hell, Bush is for those things, provided you define ‘hope’ as ‘blind ignorance to any negative events’ and prefix ‘change’ with ‘regime’…

I’m not saying he’s a terrible candidate or a horrible person, but for all I’ve seen of him, I’m not seeing anything special about him. If I was an American, sure, I’d vote for him – but only because he’s better than the Republican candidate, and that’s hardly a difficult achievement. I just find it truly bizarre how many American political commentators are extolling Obama’s apparently self-evident charisma, while I find him completely absent of that quality. It’s one thing to build a personality cult around a candidate, it’s quite another to build it around a candidate who seems completely lacking in personality…

Now, like I said, I don’t think he’s a bad candidate, and I’m sure if elected Obama will reverse at least some of the worst excesses of the Bush administration. Still, I find it rather odd that he seems to me to be utterly lacking in what is supposed to be his strongest attribute.

Not that a lack of charisma is really that much of a weakness going up against McCain, who seems to be deliberately and systematically trying to destroy what little public support he had left over from 2000...