A look from afar: the U.S Presidential Election
by Gerard Ball
As a journalism student in Ireland, I’m not exactly averse to reading about news both foreign and domestic. Given Ireland’s minuscule size, though, I do find myself putting more precedence on international affairs. With this in mind, It will come as no surprise to anyone that – especially recently – the U.S Presidential Elections is a topic that I have been engrossed with for quite some time.
I’ve followed a few U.S. Presidential campaigns in my time, but given that I’m only 23 years of age, it was the Obama vs McCain campaign in 2008 that began my interest. That aforementioned campaign was hardly charming nor overly decent, nor was Obama vs Romney in 2012 – but were either campaigns nefarious with alleged criminality after criminality hallmarking their respective campaigns? I don’t think so; which is why the Trump vs Clinton campaign will go down as historic – for all the wrong reasons – regardless of who triumphs, at least from my international perspective.
Healthcare, military and employment are but a few issues that tend to dominate election manifestos – as you can understand. We all want to vote for a candidate that promises to deliver on issues that we hope will result in a country run the way we, as the voter, want the country to run. That same philosophy holds true for the states. However, I haven’t seen much debate in and around policies between Trump and Clinton – what I have seen is myriad of insults, blatant falsehoods, admissions of appalling behavior and a tone of depressing realism that these are seemingly the finest candidates a country with the global influence of The United States of America can rustle up.
Now, I believe one candidate to be significantly worse in many respects, but I like precisely none of them. I was simply taken aback when Donald Trump insisted that he never, not once, showed a wanting to give the green light for the Iraq war. The man must know of the video that precisely shows him doing just that? I believe he does, how couldn’t he know this? He often demonises Clinton for her voting for intervention so he cannot be seen to have also been for it – even though there is video evidence showing exactly that. It was puzzling.
Having watched all three debates which took part at approximately 2.00 am Irish time, I was left with the following conclusions:
Clinton is robotic in her answers – it seems that she knew exactly what to say at every given question. Kudos for preparation, but she really is, as so many seem to say, the establishment candidate. Snopes has debunked fake stories about her getting the questions beforehand– but looking at her debate performances you do have to wonder.
As for Trump performances? Well, he mostly didn’t answer the questions put forth to him and went on about some useless rhetoric about how terrible the United States in performing.
I can offer some anecdotal evidence to give some perspective of how certain people in Ireland viewed the last debate; a group of my friends stayed up to watch the whole thing. Their analysis mainly revolved around the ‘hilarious’ one-liners that Trump offered up and also how Clinton ‘destroyed him’ with her rebuttal that when Clinton and Obama went after Bin Laden, Trump was doing Celebrity Apprentice. They never mentioned any policy once.
This isn’t a reality TV show, this is the Presidential Election for The United States of America. Is it too much to ask that both candidates sit down (or stand) and debate their take on their opponent’s policies? And why their policies are indeed the ones that should be implemented? Yes, for this campaign, that is too much to ask.
With all that said; I’m sure the many millions of Americans want nothing but prosperity for their country – whomever they intend/have voted for. My take on it, as a simple bystander from little old Ireland, is that both candidates are deeply flawed, lack class and have failed to inspire much confidence in the international on-looking community – never mind American citizens. I know who I’d vote for – rightly or wrongly I wouldn’t even consider Stein or Johnson – but I would feel empty after casting my ballot, as my vote would be for my ‘lesser of two evils’ candidate as opposed to a candidate that stands for the same social and political ideals as me. Sad times ahead.
Gerard Ball – a 23 year old journalism student who likes to write about news, sport, arts and is a keen follower of international news affairs.