It is understandable that people around the world obsess about US elections given the cultural and political impact the country has on the rest of us.
Some of them even try to support one or other candidate in Presidential elections as US election law allows foreigners to do just about anything, as long as it’s routine volunteer work.
Vladimir Putin probably didn’t need to think about this when he helped get Donald Trump elected and if it was done at arms-length it might even have been legal.
But what about Australian and Australians response to the US election? At times our responses make us look more like a US dependency or protectorate rather than an ally – foolish as even the latter concept may be.
Emblematic of this over decades are the attitudes of the political class (staffers, politicians and Press Gallery) towards political TV viewing. Once this class was obsessed with Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister and could quote lines from the shows at the drop of a hat. Later it was the same with West Wing.
Less influential rhetorically, but achieving a more visceral response, were the UK and US versions of House of Cards which had Shakespearean characteristics including wonderful Macbeth and Lady Macbeth like performances by Ian Urhquart, Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright.
But political class obsession with foreign politics is one thing – it is another matter when it comes to the ABC.
The ABC was sufficiently interested in exploring our relationship with the US to look at polls about what Australians thought about the US election. The ABC’s Patricia Karvelas (26/8) reported that a poll by Talbot Mills Research had found that Australians are overwhelmingly likely to vote for Kamala Harris by a margin of 48% to 27%. Even Coalition voters prefer Harris to Trump.
It is rather like Bette Midler’s famous lines in the film Beaches – “That’s enough about me? What do you think about me?”
This is all ironic given that it is impossible to talk about US democracy without remembering the extent of US election interference in the many democracies around the world the US has destabilised or arranged coups to remove. The number is significant with most Latin American countries appearing on the list at some point in their history.
And does anyone not believe the US had a role in the Whitlam Dismissal because of what they perceived as threats to assets such as Pine Gap?
Meanwhile a demented Trump is claiming UK Labour is intervening in the US election despite the fact that they are too busy undermining their own government to take time to interfere with another one.
Then there are the US interventions to ‘free’ nations such as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Congo and Iran only to allow them to descend into chaos.
Far too often Australia has joined the US in helping bring regime changes while adding to the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour.
Our Prime Ministers make routine trips to kiss the Washinton ring and commit to making us nuclear targets by hosting major facilities like Pine Gap and buying nuclear powered submarines to threaten China.
Australian taxpayers help fund think tanks which push US policies and priorities on to government and saturate the media with reports, research and propaganda masquerading as analysis.
Oddly enough some Prime Ministers, after retirement, such as Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating challenge the conventional wisdom but are then regarded as oddballs suffering from relevance deprivation rather than being significant figures offering Cassandra style warnings.
The reality though is that many in the Australian political class act more as compradors than people focussed on Australian interests rather than those of ‘powerful friends’.
Meanwhile – if you think you know the outcome of the forthcoming US election you are better pundit than the blog.