The contrasts in North America鈥檚 political scenes have been quite graphic of late.聽
Comparing the endless American presidential chase to the Canadian system, helps us draw the conclusion that our Canadian way, with the exception of Senatorial appointments, is superior in its deployment.聽
That does not conclude our candidates and hopefuls are any better, it鈥檚 just that our system, at least on surface glimpses, appears to be a more settled and less rattled process of selection and rejection. It obviously takes a lot less time and money to do the sorting.聽
The United States presidential candidates have been whittled down to the precious two, after two years of rhetoric and unsupervised spending of hundreds of millions of dollars. Still, they have only reached the point where the two survivors are now going to face off in another endless campaign of 鈥減ick me.鈥澛�
While the U.S. selection process, at least for the past two years, has been one that foments fear and hatred, we surprised ourselves by selecting a leader from a small pack of wanna-be Prime Ministers. The new one deliberately selected his now well-rehearsed Sunny Ways mantra which grabbed Canadians鈥� interest on the exact opposite scale to the American candidates. 聽
While American reporters and political analysts are busying themselves trying to find out how to ask the questions of their two candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Canadian reporters are trying to figure out whether or not our PM is for real and how can the Senate operate now that it is supposedly an independent body and not one that requires political favour seeking.
The time has arrived for the traditional media in the United States to start asking the tough questions while not allowing the selected twosome to duck the answers by shifting the topic in mid-response.聽
The hatred-spewing Trump, with his narcissistic view of country and globe was, at first, considered a somewhat entertaining, but also unbelievable, candidate who could never be considered a serious contender.聽
Now he is and America is trying to figure out what to do with him, and the American media (and others) aren鈥檛 helping the situation by doing their own dodging and darting around Trump, frightened to raise the hackles of the beast they don鈥檛 quite understand.
They have theories, but no hardline questions. The Republican鈥檚 choice seems to change courses in midstream, never falling into accountability for anything he says. He just spews more hatred when confronted with facts and the few challenges that have been hurled in his direction.聽
The Democrats are in no less trouble, trying to get to the bottom of the Clinton family fantasy world and her inability to stand up to truths as well.
When we have this advantage of being able to hear all the blue air rhetoric being emitted by our neighbouring politicians to the south, we breath a sigh of relief that something like that could never happen here.聽
Or could it?聽
For one thing, we鈥檙e not fixated on just two parties. We like to mix it up a bit and that keeps our politicians on their proverbial toes.聽
We also supposedly select the parties and they, in turn, pick their leaders through a slightly more refined and defined process that takes a lot less time, once they actually get started.聽
But, that鈥檚 not to say our system has provided us with any better leadership on the national or global stages. We鈥檝e had our stinkers and our winners, just as our friends in the United States have over the years.聽
So, the making of the leaders may be drastically different, but results are not necessarily better. History gets to define that matter. 聽 聽
