Finally, the USA votes.

As observed from the depths of Oxfordshire, England this campaign shows the strengths and weaknesses of US-style democracy in vast proportions.

The strengths? A succession of epic battles – anyone remember Hillary? The leading candidates making it to this point have shown astonishing leadership, stamina and courage – the ‘managed democracy’ of various other places is pathetic by comparison. Both Obama and McCain have risen to the occasion.

Weaknesses? Given McCain’s eccentric record on campaign financing ‘reform’, it may well serve him right if he loses to a candidate who has outgunned him in this area. Obama has studiously avoided all the tough questions about his personal far-leftist associations and his feeble record, hammering away blandly at Change and Hope. Lots of the usual complaints about possibilities to cheat in voter registration and actual voting. But in a country the size of the USA, it is not easy to cheat on a scale that matters and get away with it. Or, at least, that’s the idea.

The one great casualty in this campaign has been Feminism. First the Obama Left thrashed away sexistly at Hillary Clinton, then they railed at Sarah Palin. The sour apparatchiks of the ‘official women’s movement’ don’t care about the damage they have done to ordinary women by accepting this revolting cynicism – they bank on getting masses of taxpayers’ money and political access from Obama if he wins. Plus his support through eg judicial appointments and taxpayers’ money for their absolutist abortion positions.

Obama looks set to win handily if eg Real Clear Politics polling aggregation is any guide. The question will then be what sort of showing the Republicans put up in the House/Senate races – will the Democrats have a mandate to do whatever they like?  

If that’s what they (and we) get, the USA could well lurch from Big Government to Massive Government, tending to become even more corrupt and clumsy/inept than it is already.

The horror of that may be shrouded for a while (if Obama is lucky) by a subsiding of the financial crisis and a surge in economic optimism again. But the longer-term waste and decay caused by the skewing of resources in non-market ways will be expensive beyond imagination. 

This is where President Bush’s legacy – like that of the tired Republican establishment leadership as a whole – is especially dismal. All he/they did by tolerating the ‘earmark’ culture in Congress and other domestic federal-level excesses in the name of ‘compassionate conservatism’ was allow the philosophy of Big Stupid Government to gain a new pseudo-respectability at a higher spending level. No more ‘federal spending’ – in comes ‘federal investment’!

This has given McCain as a mainstream Big Government Guy little to work with. Can Palin or someone else champion/lead a new approach next time round? But even if they win then, they will have to start to prune back Huge Government from a far huger position than now.

So unless a stunning final twist occurs, no joy in this for Republicans who now may face a very long time out of power as the Democrats buy themselves a privileged position and try to squeeze conservative media outlets in the name of ‘fairness’.

That said, given the financial crash and the mainstream media bias against them, McCain/Palin have done an outstanding job to hang in there as strongly as they have done – scarcely a sign that the USA is stampeding towards Change or Hope?

Whatever.

It’s only some 208 weeks until the next US Presidential election, if you don’t like the result of this one.