Democracy - the American Way

Many people may think that the American way of doing things is the right way of doing things; well at least Americans may think so. I for one reckon it is strange that, like Britain, the US consists of a two-party system, which in my opinion eliminates many thoughts and point of views. Although there are smaller parties in the US today, they do not achieve much power. Therefore the presidential position can only be taken by either a democrat or a republican.

In the US today, the smaller parties run for presidency as the two larger parties do, but they do not run to win, because they know that the American society is too used to the way things are run in the country. They do however run for presidency in order to proclaim more power to their parties, and to get involved in politics in order to promote their issues to the larger parties. Furthermore there have been independent candidates who have run for presidency; an example is the wealthy businessman named Ross Perot received 19% of the popular votes in the 1992 elections. In my opinion, I reckon this is an excellent part of the American democracy because it enables people with other political views than the two larger parties to have the opportunity to speak out.

There are many phases in the American presidential election, and they can be divided into four phases; the primaries, national conventions, campaigns and the elections.

In the two largest parties in the US, it is important to appoint candidates who may run for presidency. Because there are normally many persons who want to run for presidency, the primaries helps the parties to find their candidates. This is a quite democratic system which gives the candidate with most support the opportunity to run for presidency against the other party. Each state, using different methods, figures out who they want to support, and then they attend a national party convention to reflect the opinion in their state. This usually happens between February and June. During the recent election of 2004, three candidates for presidency was selected from the Democratic Party; John Kerry, John Howard and John Edwards. These three candidates fought hard to win votes across the states, but at the end John Kerry, the wealthy businessman from Massachusetts, achieved the most support and thereby selected as presidential candidate against President George W. Bush.

This is a very democratic way of choosing the presidential candidate, but what happens next is the most exciting part of the four phases, the campaign. During the campaign, there was a lot of hostility between the two candidates and they did everything to make the other seem like a fool. How can this be a civilized way of running a campaign? Both candidates tried to drag the other candidate's name through the mud, and by doing so, win the election. Though it happens all over the world, everything seems to be more extreme in the US. An example of this is the amount of money used by the two candidates to campaign. I dare to say that the amount succeeded more than millions all together. Just think of all the poor and sick people they could have helped instead

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