Europe votes

I have often been critical about the EU (and rightly so) but one aspect needs to be flagged up as more or less good. It is the rule that residents of an EU country, who are nationals of another EU country, can vote in the country of their residence.

Thus it is that I have had the pleasure of voting in my town of residence (Rome). It was bloody hard work with all the paperwork (which Italians love), and I had to go down to the electoral office an hour away to get my voting card, but voting in a strange country under a strange system was a real pleasure. Something like 15 parties, each with a colourful logo and smiling face, fielded hundreds of candidates, and you could vote either for the candidate or the party, in which case they would allot your vote.

I don't agree with the proportional representation system, believing it entrenches the parties and the political class, I didn't agree with what almost all of them had to say, and I didn't agree that the election was conducted more or less on national lines (as it was in England). But I did get that frisson of being a part of a democratic system and participating in it.

Good fun.

US Elections

There is much talk of whether Joseph Biden was the right choice for Obama's running mate. It seems to me wrong: he is a figure from the past, whereas Obama portrays himself as the future; he is a pro-choice catholic, which will not deliver much of the catholic vote; he has been derided for copying a speech by Neil Kinnock (himself a politician derided in the UK); his experience of foreign affairs goes against Obama's statement that he didn't need experience because it was all a matter of judgment.

Many are saying he should have chosen Hillary. But apart from the problem that she and her husband would overshadow any campaign, I wonder if she was sounded out about the job and refused: she wants to be president and for that Obama has to lose (if he were re-elected, 2016 would be too late for Hillary).

An interesting difference between US and UK politics is the importance of the party. Hillary, in carrying on long after she had lost, has been disloyal to her party to an extent that would earn her censure in the UK. At the same time the party, if it were the UK, would have seen her as more likely to beat McCain and somehow wangled her selection. Now there is no senior figure in the party to keep her under control until November (her husband won't).

These are difficult times for Obama. I hope his nerves are steady.