Editorial

A woman, or a man of colour?

There’s an interesting election scenario shaping up in the States. Come November, voters who want a Democratic Party president will have either a woman or a black man on the ballot to choose from.
This has never happened before in the U.S., and raises a few questions. For starters, voters must ask themselves if in their enthusiasm to get rid the Republicans, they are getting the right person in exchange.
Voting for someone because of who they are not is not sound thinking. Nor, of course, is voting for someone merely because of their sex, skin colour or party affiliation.
Voters are swayed by many things other than objective facts. And even those who strive to learn the truth about the candidates have their work cut out for them, wading through all the ‘image manipulation’ that goes on.
But all that aside, it will be interesting to see how the American electorate – generally a pretty conservative crowd – deals with having either a woman or black man as one of their two choices for president. Two opposite but powerful forces – optimism and fear – may make the difference.
Although quite conservative, Americans are – or traditionally have been – also optimistic about things working out for the best. This has largely been the American experience. More recently, insecurity has begun creeping in – and has been exploited and manipulated, some claim, by the Bush administration for its own particular ends.
Will fear of change induce people to go for the devil they know? Or will that old American optimism allow them to take a chance on the devil they don’t?
Then again, even if the latter holds true and the States ends up with its first woman president or first black president, will she or he be the right person for the job?
Tough questions with no easy answers. That’s politics and that’s life.

Speaking of elections
The experts are telling us there will probably be a provincial election in February or March. The news does not seem to have created a lot of excitement in these parts, and why should it in a constituency where the Tories seem to win automatically?
The best we can hope for, evidently, is a spirited challenge from some outsider (everyone who isn’t running for the PC Party is an outsider), who will lose anyway.
One trouble is, the opposition parties are often very late in getting off the mark in rural ridings like ours. Why? It’s hard to convince somebody to give up six weeks of their life in what is essentially a futile effort.
We may be in for another snoozer.
But then again, maybe not.