Pray it's Romney

I write as the sunrise marches west across the USA, and voters are choosing between Obama and Romney.  Any Kiwi who has ever been on a flight east to west chasing the dawn gets the drama.  Poll booths are opening like dominoes falling across the States, and Americans are making their choice.

One writer in the NZ Herald commented that if it were up to New Zealanders, Obama would romp in.  What is it, with these Americans?  Romney might be a very nice guy, rich and hospitable, exemplary family man and kind to animals.  But he manifestly doesn’t know much and, worse, he is surrounded and guided by serious right wing fanatics, oil interests, and religious loonies.  We had all that with George W Bush.  This would be worse.  Whatever faults Obama might have, Romney is simply not up to it. 

But we are told that the polls are close.  It’s neck and neck, evidently.  I for one have cold chills about this.  The President of the United States, despite all the ambivalences, which are many, still exercises power which affects us all.  What they call Democracy, which they think they invented and exemplify, is horrifyingly negotiable.  They use torture.  They run concentration camps.  They think it is OK to circumvent the law and human rights if it is America that is doing it.  They think American lives are somehow worth more than other lives when they are lost. 

Most of the free world is heartily tired of America.  There is something called the American Dream, which makes most of us fall about laughing. 

But still, these people could have made Romney president by tomorrow.  It’s chilling.  We are driven to resort to prayer.