IT is difficult to imagine a would-be politician in the UK saying “vote for me, I used to be a PE teacher”, and harder still to imagine a crowd going wild in response.
As slogans go, it’s up there with “vote for me, I am physically capable of procreation”, or “vote for me, my wife loves me”, or “vote for me, I briefly held a gun on behalf of the government.” All three of which, it seems, are also effective ways of winning a sympathetic hearing from political crowds in the land of the free.
Yes, last week I was watching the Democratic National Convention (DNC). British party conferences are curious enough beasts.
But everything is bigger in America, and the DNC has spent four solid days projecting happy warrior energy at the world, determined to survive Joe Biden’s (above) final wobble and tear into the upcoming presidential election with gusto.
In principle, this seems like the right attitude to take. The whole world has a stake in the Terracotta Weeble wobbling to a second defeat come November.
But dipping into American politics during election year is like an out-of-body experience. You can understand most of the words their politicians and pundits use, if not how they’ll land with the average American voter. But the overall effect melts at the edges into something entirely surreal. Some of this is about policy – god, guns, manifest destiny. Much more of it is about affect.
There’s still a lot to be said for the old observation that Britain and America are two nations separated by a common language. If you peek into European elections – even if you can parlay your high school modern languages into understanding snatches of the debates – the linguistic differences put you on notice that you aren’t following the political conversation in the same way as a native.
It’s the superficial accessibility of American politics which so often makes it such a false friend and which makes the different style in which politics is transacted there so discombobulating. And I’m not just talking about the Wisconsin delegation dressing in cheese hats made of foam rubber – though I have thoughts on that too – but the emotional saturation characterising it all.
Mega-church
The DNC isn’t a political event in the ordinary sense of the word, but a kind of mega-church experience,........