Having watched Bush be returned by a majority of the US voters this week, and also seen the final part of The Power of Nightmares and the special Question Time from Miami it has set me thinking. Whilst I can see how some of the ways details of the war on terror have been spun following 9/11 leads a large proportion of the US to believe what they do, I still find it quite amazing that there isn’t the level of skepticism that it seems people outside the US have about their politicians.

Whilst there was the possibility of a protracted battle in Ohio again, at least Kerry and Edwards saw that they had lost the popular vote and didn’t fight on, and whilst I may not be overjoyed at another four years of Bush, the USA has at least got the president for whom they voted.

Not suprisingly Michael Moore has been muted since the result, merely sending out a list of those soilders killed in action in Iraq and asking for their forgiveness. It is worth remembering that initially he didn’t back Kerry, choosing instead General Wesley Clark, and before the Democrat primaries made many of the comments about Kerry and his charisma that have been made throughout the campaign. (Although all of those postings are now gone from his site.) There is an interesting graph of characteristics of the candidates in this disection of the Democrats election defeats by the BBC, where the top Bush value is ‘Strong Leadership’, whereas Kerry leads massively on ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Caring for People’

I think the big problem is that many people backed him as being not Bush, rather than for being John Kerry. Maybe what the Democrats need is another leader with a strong personality and charisma, basically another Clinton, which in 2008 they just might get…