What, if anything, do you in other countries think of the Presidential race in the U.S.?

Although i live in the U.S., i asked this same question to a member of the Indian Parliament last night. She elaborated, that despite political issues—this election is breaking the glass ceiling with respect to women’s rights and ethnic rights and that the world is eagerly watching as the U.S. is so pivotal on the global stage.

She further noted that having a woman or minority leader has been commonplace in many of the ‘conservative’ cultures around the world—Europe, Asia, Africa…and that it is time for the U.S. to follow suit.

I find it ironic that it’s called a “Presidential race”. A race implies it’s over and done with within a reasonable amount of time. ;)

I don’t really follow it (I’m in the UK) but what I do hear seems to be more about somebody’s colour, somebody’s sex and somebody’s daughter being pregnant than who’d be good to run the country. Maybe that’s just the parts that make it over here (or into my scope, at least).

@ GMO – That is the one thing that really hit me the other day. no matter who wins it will be monumental for us. A woman or a minority (which is almost not the case). It is about time

@ damien – your right on both accounts. Especially the latter. It should be about what they do. now that they both “chose teams” Pres and Vice Pres they will start with the “I will do this and that” and ” they wont do this and that”.

Xhosa/Basutho friend living in England asked me
if it was this simple here: if you can raise enough money, you can get elected; if you’re poor, you’re nothing.

@ susanc – I find that a very interesting question. It sure seems that way.

I think there was an election in and eastern state, a low level one, where they put and upper limit on what you could spend and a waitress one over the incumbent.

I don’t follow it very closely. I probably will pay attention when it gets to the actual voting, but I really don’t care who got who pregnant or why it’s so hard for someone named Obama to disassociate himself from Islam….
At the end of the day, the democrats are quite right-winged IMO, so it’s a choice between right or further right and whoever wins will only get one term because they’ll have some cleaning up to do and however they try, they won’t be popular.

wild, where are you from?

The Faroe Islands.

well I’m bored of it. Don’t you guys always decide the winner in the courts afterwards anyway?

the winner has already been decided
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks

@lightlyseared – seriously or sarcastically? where are you from? I kinda wish that is what happened last time.

@ allengreen – didn’t an article from the onion get out to china or japan and was taken seriously once?

@ wildflower – how does it work in The Faroe Islands?

I think i heard something like that bri

wild are Faroe Islands near the Azors ?

Multi-party system with a coallision government – basically if you can get 17 of the 32 elected mp’s to play nice for 4 years, you win. But you still only get to govern certain areas, while others are still governed by the Danish government – also a coallision formed of a majority of parliament , which has 2 representatives from Faroes and 2 from Greenland.

@Allen: search for the CIA factbook entry for the Faroe Islands. I’d link, but it takes too long on the iPhone…

@ allen

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=The%20Faroe%20Islands&gbv=2&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=il

@ wildflower : holly cow. talk about complicated

@Bri: then I probably shouldn’t get in to the voting system…..proportional representation thingy (I should add that too kevbo’s mind boggling thread)

@wild: so you can proportionalize your vote ?

No. Each party chooses whether or not to run in each district and they nominate district-specific candidates. You can vote for a candidate or party (or an out-of-party candidate) in your district. The 32 seats in parliament are proportionately distributed between the district, based on the population,, but then it gets complicated when a party gets enough votes for say 2,3 of the 5 seats in that district and they can then tally up the ‘unused’ votes country wide and may get an extra seat…...it really makes my head hurt even though it’s the system I grew up with!
and sorry if this is a bit unclear, not sure how well I can explain all this in English…

@ wildflower – your doing great. I think the concept is clear. We have a really weird system here call the electoral college. It was supposed to be a system where the few represented the majority vote of numbers. If more voted for A then A got the vote. but

“The United States is the only current example of an indirectly elected executive president, with an electoral college made up of electors representing the 50 states and one federal district. Each state has a number of electors equivalent to its total Congressional representation, with the non-state District of Columbia receiving three electors. The electors generally cast their votes according to the winner of the popular vote in their respective states, but in many cases are not required by law to do so.”

They are not required by law to do so. So a single individual can negate thousands and thousands of votes, or entire states.

I like to hear updates, and I read some of the questions about it here on Fluther, and I must say that it’s definitely a whole lot more interesting than our politics. Here’s a good article that sort of shows the comparison. I’ve been saying these things about Kevin Rudd for ages.

I love Australia.

@ shrubbery – Thanks much for thatlink!!!

Not a problem, I read this question and thought Hmm well I don’t really have much input, I’ll think about it and come back. Then I was reading the paper as I was eating my breakfast, read that and thought- perfect!

@Shrubbery – side note: it just strikes me as fricken cool that your eating your breakfast and I am prepping dinner and we are back and forthing in real time.

horay for the internet

The NYT had a little poll that showed all the countries as having more confidence in Obama than McCain. All except for Jordan, which was a tie. I think it was in last Sunday’s NYT magazine.

Also check out the link re: Obama’s foreign relations policy on CSPAN, which could explain a few things: http://tinyurl.com/5kho9j It’s the one at the top of the list.

I’m so about the potential of the future that an Obama presidency can bring, approaching other countries as humanitarians and not as a military force.

@ Megan – excellent! Thanks!!! I am to!

I know, it’s pretty damn cool to think about. I’m sorry, I had to go to work. You’re probably asleep now!

I’ve not been watching it incredibly closely, but the recent Palin hype led to some digging around, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about Obama when it all first started out – he seems to have an intriguing amount of integrity given he’s a politician!

@ Shrubbery – never asleep for you!

@ benseven – I get that vibe from him to. I get the opposite vibe from Palin.

I am from the Philippines. The presidential race in the US gets a lot of international news coverage! When I mean a lot, I mean a LOT in caps. It is all over the internet. One thing for sure though is that Obama is wayyyy more popular the McCain on Digg and Reddit. hehe!

I follow it over here in the UK. We’ve got some pretty serious news coverage, and most of the serious newspapers are giving it as much time as they would a UK election. There is a sense that whoever wins, it will have a big impact on people outside of the US as well. There’s definitely more of a pro-Obama slant in most of the commentary I’ve been reading – I think people over here are so astonished at the damage that Bush has done that we can’t really face the concept of any more Republican rule – regardless of how different McCain and Bush are.

@ kristianbordi – so there is a belief over there that McCain and Bush are different?