A bigot, or Gordon Brown in a frock – surely the US electorate deserve better choices to replace Barack Obama?
Our columnist gives his unforgiving take on the upcoming US presidential election
AMERICA makes a momentous decision on November 8 – will the country elect its first ever female president or its first ever fruit and nut case president?
Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?
The woman who has been hanging around the White House since Meat Loaf was having No1 hits or the big-mouthed businessman who might nuke North Korea if he is having a bad hair day?
America deserves better than this oddest of couples.
There should be enormous excitement — in the US and across the world — about the prospect of the first female president of the White House.
Clinton should be a role model.
She should be an inspiration.
She could carry with her a sense of history.
She should be making little girls all around the planet dream big, epic dreams.
Yet Hillary’s candidacy is completely devoid of all the hope and optimism that accompanied Barack Obama when he became the first black president eight years ago.
Why is there no excitement?
Because Hillary has a brooding sense of entitlement, as if it is her turn for the top job for sticking around for so long.
It is never an attractive look, which is why our own country could never summon up the enthusiasm to elect Gordon Brown as Prime Minister.
Hillary is Gordon Brown in a frock.
“Do we really want the first woman president to have been a president’s wife?” asked Allyson Hobbs in The New Yorker, trying to explain the shortfall of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.
And not merely the president’s wife but also the wife of the president who was — in Hillary’s own cutting phrase — “a hard dog to keep on the porch”.
This race for the presidency will be about the economy, foreign policy and America’s place in a changing world.
But it will also be about Bill Clinton’s difficulty in keeping his trousers up.
Donald Trump will see to it.
The bigot with the bouffant seems to have no concept of political debate.
Trump chucks whatever mud is at hand then goes down into the sewer to find more filth to throw.
Although Trump’s success is allegedly built on plain speaking, he has a recklessly cavalier attitude to the truth.
Trump says things not necessarily because he believes they are true but because he knows they will damage his political opponents.
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Trump said Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a fraud.
Trump linked Republican rival Ted Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F Kennedy.
Trump can’t see a conspiracy theory without using it to pummel his opponents.
And all the years the Clintons spent in political office, and all the women humped and dumped by Slick Willy, provide ample material for Trump’s speechwriters.
He has already called Bill Clinton an “abuser” of women and Hillary his “enabler”.
It will get far worse.
And this is America’s choice — between a stale, dull, slightly tainted Democratic candidate and a Republican candidate whose distinguishing features are spite, cruelty and stupidity.
This depressing race for the White House is between a woman who is the face of the old political establishment and a man with a mouth like an overflowing toilet, a man who somehow passes himself off as an anti-establishment figure, despite being a rich man’s son who — for all his tub-thumping patriotism — managed to sit out the Vietnam War because he was doing his hair.
The election will be won by the candidate that America hates the least.
But if President Hillary Clinton is an uninspiring prospect, then God knows the possibility of President Trump should scare the living daylights out of America.
And the world.
- LUVVIES who constantly talk down Britain and want us to remain in the EU “do not love their country”, says Iain Duncan Smith.The classic example of luvvie self-loathing is Emma Thompson’s quote about the UK: “A tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled, misery-laden grey old island.”But if our country is such a dump, Emma, then why does everyone want to live here?
Hard day's knight, sir
SIR Philip Green, the Monaco-based, man-boobed mogul, faces calls to be stripped of his knighthood for his role in the collapse of BHS.
This follows Fred “The Shred” Goodwin losing his knighthood after the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Perhaps we should be a little more careful about the kind of fat cat who actually gets a knighthood in the first place.
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn takes part in a community meeting at the Guru Har Rai Gurdwara Sahib temple
- AFTER his visit to a Sikh temple, Jeremy Corbyn, above, received criticism for taking a vow of silence about immigration.
- However, the Labour leader did win much praise for coming first in a Willie Nelson lookalike contest.
TV's Harry was voice of Britain
THE big problem for the Remain campaign is that millions who voted Tory at the General Election no longer believe a single word David Cameron says.
The Prime Minister promised he would fight for a better deal for Britain within a reformed European Union.
He told us he might lead the campaign to leave the EU.
Big fat fibs.
Ever feel you have been cheated? I do. And so does Harry Boparai, above, the father of three who savaged Cameron on the ITV debate for allowing “uncontrolled immigration” to ruin his home town of Hounslow, west London.
Harry’s concerns were the concerns of ordinary people – getting on the housing ladder, getting an appointment at the local GP, having to fight like a rat in a sack to get his children into the school of their choice.
Harry was the voice of hard-working, patriotic Britain – calm, polite, yet desperately concerned about a country where anyone with an EU passport can stroll in.
No wonder Cameron is the least trusted major politician in this referendum about our country’s future.
No wonder he could not stop chugging glasses of water during the ITV debate.
Cameron is on the wrong side of history.
And deep down inside that podgy, sweat-stained body, I suspect he knows the truth.
- A DRUNK in Nikolsk, Russia, cut off his friend’s penis with an axe in a heated argument about which one of them has the largest manhood. The accused now faces eight years in jail for inflicting a “grave injury”. On the bright side, he did settle their argument once and for all.
- YOU don’t need to have a dog to be disgusted by the straggle-haired simpleton who was caught dragging a dead Labrador through Camden Town, north London. You just need to have a heart. We like to think that we are a nation of dog lovers – and we are. But sadly there are a lot of dumb wretched animals out there. And some of them own dogs.
Ali row is now black and white
WAS Muhammad Ali racist?
Debate rages.
I know plenty of people who dislike Ali because of what he said about Joe Frazier – likening Smokin’ Joe to a gorilla – and white people, comparing them to devils.
But Ali, left, was a product of his race, his faith, his time and America.
There is no swerving the fact that he made plenty of racist remarks.
But he was also capable of generosity and love and tolerance.
“Hating people because of their colour is wrong,” Ali once said.
“And it doesn’t matter which side does the hating.
“It’s just plain wrong.”
That’s the Ali I hero-worshipped.
That is the champ I loved.
Yes, he said his fair share of dumb and racist remarks.
But he was also the greatest man I will ever meet in my life.
Integrate? Wouldn't it be nice
WHY do Muslims find it so much harder to integrate in the free world than Sikhs, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and Jedis?
It is the great mystery of our age and the great dilemma, one that will haunt us for generations.
In Dusseldorf, Germany, migrants burned down a refugee camp because they did not receive a wake-up call for breakfast during Ramadan.
In Nice, France, a Muslim waitress was beaten and called a “whore” by two North African men because she was serving alcohol during Ramadan.
Too many Muslims seem to expect our tolerance to extend to their intolerance.
Whatever happened to live and let live?
There are millions of us who do not want Europe to become any more Islamic than it is right now.
That is not racism.
It is common sense.