Jolly Old Election, 2010

Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

England is a very civilized place, and nowhere is that more apparent than their election cycle.

Elections in the UK don’t happen on a set date every four years, like they do in America – rather, Parliament sees that everybody’s term limits are coming up and says, “Well, shit – I guess we should have an election then, shouldn’t we?” And then they announce the election date, which is generally about one month after the date of the announcement.

Yes, that’s right – the entire British election cycle runs for one month, or four weeks, or 28 days, which is enough time for England to be completely overrun by zombies or for Sandra Bullock to kick her drug abuse problem and learn a valuable lesson about friendship, depending on which section of the video store you’re in.

This was quite a surprise to me, as I’m still shell shocked by the Iron Man Triathlon of a campaign we had to go through to get our current president, which I’m pretty sure started shortly before the birth of Christ and continued, relentlessly, through the following two millennia as McCain, Clinton, and Obama duked it out amid constant sideshow scuffles between a small army of obscure third party candidates and VP hopeful faux pas. As terrible as it was, though, I didn’t see anything wrong with it, because that’s how American politics works! Once every four years, there’s a solid 18 months where Saturday Night Live briefly gains relevance, and then there’s a new (or the same) guy in the White House.

I’m still sort of skeptical that you can even have an election in one month. What about the trash talking? Don’t get me wrong: There’s a fair amount of that going on here, but there’s no way that it can be enough to have an election! In my eyes, trash talk is like lubricant – you need a whole lot of it if you’re going to have a good circle jerk.

See, and politics is the circle jerk.

Not that I’m an expert on circle jerks. It’s not like I’ve ever done it or anything, because that would be really weird, right? It’s not the sort of thing you’d mention publicly, where all of your friends and your parents can read about it, unless you were totally kidding. And I am. I only know what it is because Trevor Jones keeps asking me to do one with him.

Right, anyway.

One month! They do the whole election in one month! And with three major political parties, no less – Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrats, who, as far as I can tell, are basically three slightly different shades of liberal battling it out over economic policy and immigration, as opposed to hot button issues like gay marriage or individual involvement in Vietnam.

I feel like they’re cutting corners, almost – like maybe the democracy over here isn’t quite as good as our democracy. And of course that’s true, because America invented democracy; after all, no Philly Cheesesteak will be as good as the one you have in Philadelphia, am I right?

With a one month long election cycle, Britons don’t really come to enjoy the end result as much as we do in America. There’s none of the satisfaction or accomplishment. At the end of every election in the United States, I always think, “Well, I made it through another election without completely losing my shit after the candidates called each other Nazis for the 15th time – God bless America!” Elections here are quick and easy, yet in my experience, good things don’t come quickly or easily. Knowledge, wisdom, Writers - all built on a veritable mountain of blood, sweat, and tears.

How can you be sure you’re electing the right person without two years of debate, punditry, waffling, and sex scandals? If our election had only lasted one month, John Edwards could’ve been president for nearly a year before we found out what a festering piece of shit he was! You’ve got to keep your politicians under intense public scrutiny for as long as possible – the one who doesn’t crack is your president.

At least, that’s how we do it in my country.

Truman Capps was also interested to find out that the Pacifica Forum is a political party here, and it’s called the British National Party.