Time for Americans to decide. Can they do it? No they can’t!
And so Hobson’s hour draws near: the American people face their impossible choice.
Do they want the classic insider who has been in Washington so long that she can barely find the freeway out? A woman sufficiently at ease in the corridors of power as to send top-secret emails via the server she also uses to row about the car keys with Bill?
Or would they prefer the wild card – the Trump card, verily – with interesting attitudes towards Muslims and monogamy, whose idea of fun at the weekend is to build a very long wall across the bottom of California and Texas?
Time will tell. On one thing, however, the commentariat is almost universally agreed: this election is the silliest in US presidential history; a brief, though appalling detour into the byways of rarefied madness before normal political service is resumed.
Thus the received wisdom. Almost by definition, however, received wisdom is frequently false. Received wisdom once had it that the Sun moved round the Earth; that sailing across the Atlantic would ultimately bring one to China; that England football teams could never lose to Iceland; that Jimmy Savile was the world’s first cigar-smoking saint.
No, the remarkable thing about this election is the mirror it holds up to the state of democratic politics in the West. Strip away the lewdness, Olympic-standard mudslinging and comedic excess, and the Donald and Hillary Show provides a near-perfect example of a wider electoral malaise.
Here’s the dilemma. On the one hand, voters clamour for a plain-speaking, truth-telling rebel to ride into town and lead a Peasants’ Revolt against the establishment elite; a latter-day Don Quixote, tilting frantically at the windmills of smug, self-satisfied consensus alleged to dog the ‘political class’. Then, when this shining knight appears, they run horrified back to the womb, crying out for ‘balance’, ‘moderation’ and all the other virtues of the ‘sensible middle ground’.
We expect too much. Deep down, what these voters really want is an impeccably judicious leader, imbued with decades of experience, who is nonetheless untainted by the proximity of power and whose idea of fine dining is a piping hot pasty from Greggs. Yet once it emerges that this sainted individual prefers plover’s eggs and Château Lafite, he or she is suddenly ‘out of touch’.
The problem is insoluble: power and influence, however honourably exercised and obtained, invariably distance those who hold them from the rest of us. The great absurdity of populism is the idea that maverick politicians must, by that very token, be in some obscure way ‘one of us’ – even if they top the Rich List and fall somewhere on the spectrum between crackers and certifiably insane.
Choosing our political masters will always be a choice, if not of evils, then certainly of imperfections – as the American people are now more than ever aware. Having our cake and eating it just isn’t an option. Not even Mary Berry can do that.
To read another one of Richard's rye observation pieces click here
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates on all the latest local stories
