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We can all breathe a sigh of relief now that the U.S. political conventions are over. In Europe, there wasn’t as much coverage as that shown by the American media, but as the Daily Show is transmitted in the U.K., (albeit a day or two late) and it covered both conventions in detail over six nights, we saw sufficient to realise that Hollywood-style glitz and stardust certainly isn’t dead. It was alive and in robust good health at both conventions.

What was sadly lacking was any hint of truth, sincerity, or honour. Both the Republican and Democratic conventions were about inciting strong emotion. The only difference between the audiences at the conventions and those of a football game was the latter are probably better behaved and less prone to chant anti-social slogans at the goading of the person on the podium.

The question now is: where do we go from here?

Most sane folks would probably settle for Clinton, given the somewhat dubious (at best) alternative. But what has Clinton got to offer the country, and the world?

More of the same?

More of the same, may not seem all that dreadful – after all, Obama wasn’t such a bad president, was he?

No, not if you conveniently forget about his 465 drone strikes on Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, that had killed 2,464 people as of January 2015. At least 314 of those have been civilians, including children. That’s nine times as many drone strikes as under his predecessor, George W Bush, and these are very conservative figures.^[1]

Or, if you conveniently forget those imprisoned for years without trial at Guantanamo Bay – many of whom died there – a ‘facility’ that Obama promised to close “within a year” of becoming president, or, the 3,050 U.S. servicemen still actively serving in Iraq and the 10,000 still on active duty in Afghanistan, bogged down by the Taliban just as the Russians were in the 1980s.

It’s also necessary to forget the fervour portrayed by Obama in attempting to force through the Trans Pacific Trade Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, both designed to transfer more powers to the corporate establishment and debilitate the rights of working people – that is, if we want to regard the Obama presidency as ‘not so bad’.

Not that any of this means Hillary Clinton will necessarily continue the ‘Obama Doctrine’. Provided we forget that her husband – with her backing – was responsible for the North American Free Trade Agreement that resulted in thousands of US jobs being shipped to Mexico, or, that he instigated the ‘Three Strikes’ law (Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994) that resulted in over two million Americans being incarcerated and 160,000 serving life sentences for petty crimes, or, his Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which crippled many poor black families, or, how he joined up with the Republicans in 1999 to repeal Glass-Steagall and set the scene for the crash of 2008, or, his drastic and unnecessary increase in sanctions against Iraq, from 1993 onwards, that crippled the Iraqi economy and directly led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children – one reason put forward by Osama bin Laden for the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Or, without doubt, his worst act of omission: failing to commit U.S. troops to support a paltry collection of U.N. peacekeepers in Rwanda. Knowing what was happening in that country, aware of the impending genocide, he did nothing. His inaction contributed to the appalling suffering and deaths of perhaps a million innocent people.^[2]

Doing nothing when people are in danger seems a recurring problem for the Clintons. Was Benghazi, perhaps, a ghostly reminiscence of Rwanda?

Okay, so Hillary Clinton may not be the greatest presidential candidate ever, but she is a woman. That’s the most important criteria for many.

Why will being a woman make her a better president?

It won’t, of course. History shows us that women in power behave just like men, and we can be assured that Clinton will, too.

With regard to her Republican competitor it’s equally difficult to find anything good to recommend him. Donald Trump, by anyone’s standards, is an arsehole. He runs roughshod over any who stand in his path. He’s a narcissist par excellence, and the idea of him being in control of the nuclear codes that could destroy the world truly doesn’t bear thinking about.

Consequently, when every factor is taken into consideration, the decision that folks in the U.S. have to make come November, is between a madman (a la ‘Dr Strangelove’) and a committed neoliberalist liar hellbent on implementing the already discredited U.S. ‘New World Order’, and burying the last vestiges of democracy forever.

All Americans should ensure they have a coin in their pockets come polling day.

^{[1] “Almost 2,500 now killed by covert US drone strikes since Obama inauguration six years ago: The Bureau’s report for January 2015” The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, February 2015}

^{[2] “15 Ways Bill Clinton’s White House Failed America and the World” AlterNet, June 2015}

It’s amazing how quickly perceptions can change. Only yesterday Hillary Clinton was considered cold, calculating, and a totally establishment-immersed politician; a hawk of the Democratic party.

Today, thanks to the glib tongue of her ex-president husband, she’s warm, kind, and caring…

“I married my best friend,” he said. “We’ve been walking and talking and laughing together ever since.”^[1]

…a champion for all American people.

At least, that’s how the media portrays it.

There’s no doubt Bill Clinton did a good job. His rendition of their early life and love would bring a tear to any eye. But, let’s not forget, even Crippen was capable of intense love, and the Clinton’s marriage may have endured for more practical reasons than adoration, particularly given Bill’s ability to spread his ‘love’ around.

Can anyone change their character and personality overnight? Of course not. Hillary Clinton is the exact same person she was yesterday, last week, and probably forty years ago when she married her husband. They were both at law school together.

Glib talking and glitz are the prerequisites of U.S. political conventions. They’re meaningless tinsel, designed only to stir the right emotions. Reality, truth, and sincerity are low down on the menu, if listed at all. Or, maybe they’re ‘Off’ – “sorry, sold out” – on that particular day.

The Clintons are surrounded by controversy: mafia involvement, murder, financial malpractices, rape and sexual harassment….the list does tend to go on and on. While much of it is hard to prove and some, at least, no more than malicious gossip, the sheer weight of accusations surrounding this couple would most certainly have instigated serious criminal investigations into the activities of any less powerful individuals.

Given that the prerequisite for a U.S. president has always been an unblemished record and personal life, Hillary Clinton hardly seems a suitable candidate. She is known to have lied publicly (remember how she ducked low to avoid the bullets while leaving her helicopter in Iraq?), and her latest email débâcle would have seen a lesser mortal incarcerated.

It’s surely an indicator of the decline in political standards everywhere that neither Clinton, nor her opponent in the upcoming presidential campaign, are remotely suitable for the office they’re hoping to fill. It leaves Americans in a dilemma, between a twisted, egomaniacal, businessman on one side, and an untrustworthy, establishment hawk with, at best, a dubious résumé, on the other.

The world is in crisis mode, but to many Democrats the glib tongue of Bill Clinton conveniently transformed his wife into a global messiah overnight.

We’ll have to see if this Clinton magic spell is sufficiently durable to last until November.

^{[1] “US election: Bill Clinton backs ‘best friend’ Hillary to lead US” BBC, July 27th 2016}

For once in her political life Debbie Wasserman Schultz has done the decent thing and resigned her position as chairwoman of the U.S. Democratic Party’s Democratic National Committee (DNC). The exposure by Wikileaks of emails clearly proving her staff worked to prevent Bernie Sanders from achieving the Democratic nomination, has only served to highlight what was already known by anyone familiar with U.S. politics.

Rigging the result is standard practice in American politics. Indeed, it’s almost accepted as inevitable – until suddenly someone slips up and facts are made known, as in this case. Then there’s a public outcry, at least by those supporters whose candidate has been wronged.

Indeed, as the BBC’s North America reporter, Anthony Zurcher, points out:

The revelation that those in the heart of the Democratic establishment sought to undermine the anti-establishment Sanders is roughly on a par with police Capt Renault’s professed shock that gambling was taking place in the Casablanca club he was raiding, as a waiter hands him his winnings.”^[1]

Though at risk of revealing his age Zurcher has, in a few lines, neatly portrayed the absurdity of politics in today’s world. Accepting corruption as rife in third world banana republics has long been the norm, though scorned by more ‘civilised’ societies, but the people of America and much of the Western world are now realising they too are being conned by their politicians. Sadly, like the citizens of those banana republics, they’re also learning they can do very little about it.

Democracy is about choosing to vote for a representative who can best serve you. When the realization dawns that no-one on the voting list will do that, democracy is dead.

Wasserman Schultz is not being sacrificed for her devious malpractices, but because she’s allowed those malpractices to become public knowledge.

^{[1] US election: Email row claims Debbie Wasserman Schultz” BBC, July 25th 2016}