The election will be over soon…
Think of the children!
Thank goodness the election will be over soon…
Four years ago, Barack Obama was elected on the basis that he would do two things. Firstly, he would overturn the illiberal, warmongering excesses of the George W Bush administration, and usher in a new, more properly American era of peace and liberty. And secondly, and more profoundly, he would challenge the rise of nasty, negative politics – what he referred to in his inauguration speech as “stale political arguments” – and re-centre American politics around the higher values of “courage, fair play, tolerance and curiosity”.
On both fronts he has failed, and he has failed miserably. His administration has been as illiberal as Bush’s, if not more so. And far from reinvigorating politics, Obama has overseen an era in which political discourse in America has become coarser, more vindictive and more personality-based than it has been at any other point in history.
