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Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Here’s something you don’t see every day …
A British writer asking his countrymen: “Why can’t we be more like the Yanks?”
In today’s Telegraph newspaper, Daniel Hannan argues that British politics should be more like America’s. He said Americans are fortunate in their optimism. “Theirs is the political culture that produced West Wing, predicated on the idea that even the people you disagree with are patriots,” he says.
Hannan also admires the fact that both McCain and Obama have had to prove themselves through the primary process. “Whoever wins, the U.S. will be well and ably led,” he says. “By way of contrast, imagine how Gordon Brown would have fared at such meetings.”
All in all, Hannan says that the United States is luck in its political system. “If Britain had a more Jeffersonian democracy — by which I mean dispersed powers, localism, the direct election of public officials, recall referendums and, above all, open primaries — we should live in a happier and more prosperous state,” he claims.
Of course Hannan’s column prompted a flood of comments from readers on the newspaper’s Web site, begging to be spared from any American influence.