My Super [Bitter]Sweet British Tuesday

Despite what turned out to be quite the anticlimactic night in terms of results, I spent Super Tuesday evening busily discussing the election at a party and then watching the results come in on a tiny TV in a friend's living room. This is normal enough, except I was the only American in the room and had to watch not-so-shocking news about Hillary taking Arkansas in between not-so-shocking weather forecasts predicting rain in northern England. Oh, and it was three in the morning. I've been studying in England for about a month now, and last night I experienced the extent to which whole world really is eagerly watching, rooting, and speculating--none of which we really do when there's an election happening outside our borders.

At some point a girl asked me if we in America have an equivalent interest in British politics--were we as excited while awaiting the handover of power from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown? Not considering the obvious reaction--No, because there's not even an election for Prime Minister, so that's...boring--she made me realize how disproportional our interest in foreign elections is compared to how much others focus on ours.

Surely a lot of it is because this election is perhaps our most fascinating and dramatic one ever, and the next US president's policies will directly affect basically every other country the way hegemons tend to do. But how many world leaders' actions do we follow beyond those of the Ahmadinejads and Chavezes of the world? We talk ad nauseum about Hillary making history as our first woman president, but were we nervously watching last year when Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner became Argentina's first?

I think that the break away from the dark cloud of the Bush administration that many Americans are hoping for with this election--and the improved image of America to the world that could come with it--has to also come from us, the voters, and our attitudes. Candidates can run as much on a "change" platform as they want, but it's us, the voters, who can also do our part to tone down national hubris and contribute to a more global vision of politics.

It's awesome that so many people here like to discuss the election, because as the token American, it's made it easier to make friends. But it'd be cool that as we come to terms with a more globalized world, we in the US notice foreign elections as somewhat relevant too. Armenian election viewing party, anyone?