Pristine experience of the US presidential campaign

Americans will soon be electing their new President, freely and democratically, of course. The rest of the world, showing traditionally good manners and politeness, will just be watching the presidential race in the United States with curiosity and genuine interest.

Like most others on this side of the Atlantic, at present. I don’t see any of the presidential candidates as a clear future winner of this year’s fascinating race. But listening to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the two most probable candidates, I just keep asking myself the same question as in the past: For heaven’s sake, America is a great nation and has millions of talented, intelligent, educated and wise people, but where are they again? Why don’t they run for president of their proud nation? Where are the hard-working middle class university graduates with common sense, clean hands, clear conscience, and a record marked by actions that win them universal respect in their communities? And where is that honest man, Ron Paul, either? Why are similar people of moral integrity and impeccable reputation not venturing to run for president and get elected? I don’t know. But then, I am not an American, so how could I have an answer?

Be that as it may, there is at least one positive thing when it comes to U.S. presidential elections. No crazy foreign billionaire living abroad, no foreign nation or its leaders, nor any foreign state’s intelligence agency, is going to interfere. No one is going to be an intrusive idiot to send billions of dollars to influence the U.S. presidential campaign in one way or another. And if you think that that’s only natural and just the way it should be everywhere else in the world then you are wrong. It unfortunately isn’t. Just imagine how would Americans feel if a foreign megapower of, say, two billion, and a defense budget ten times that of America’s, interfered in the U.S. presidential race with the aim of supporting that megapower’s puppet? Or that that foreign megapower would work hard to help overthrow a democratically elected American president in the middle of his/her term, just because he or she may not be liked in that megapower’s capital. No such thing will ever happen. Without even realizing it, American voters are therefore very lucky. In the end they will only have themselves to blame if they end up disliking their next president.

Michal Zoldy is a Slovakian journalist, translator and interpreter  residing in Bratislava.