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Can the Obama revolution come here?

I spent several months in the UK in 2008 before I shipped back to North Carolina to work on Obama’s campaign. I was struck how at some point the British press stopped bothering to contextualise US election stories as being about another country. The candidates were named and discussed in shorthand just as if they were running for Parliament – and usually given much more coverage than the latest row in Westminster.

Yet at the same time, I kept hearing the rueful opinion that none of this would be possible over here. The British people, I was told, were far too apathetic, far too disengaged, far too convinced that their voice – no matter how loud – would fall on the deaf ears of politicians who couldn’t be bothered. Plus, as I was frequently reminded, “there is no British Obama”.

All of this casts a rather sad tinge to the cathartic obsession with the America election – it’s as if many Brits gave up looking for vibrant democracy in their own lives and resolved to experience it vicariously in ours.
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