The World is Watching the US Elections

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Image by DonkeyHotey

The clock is running down on the US elections and while the US generally doesn't give a damn about the elections in the rest of the world, the rest of the world certainly gives a damn about elections in the US. After all, despite the decline, the US is still the most powerful country in the world and is likely to remain that way for quite some time. Everyone seems to be watching the US presidential elections quite closely and while foreign countries generally have a policy of trying to stay out of the elections of other countries, that line is being trod on quite frequently this time around.

For example, here's a video of the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia warning of the dangers of the "Cranks and Crazies" in the US Republican party.


Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing fierce criticism at home for allegedly interfering in the US election, a claim he denies, even though Netanyahu clearly is trying to help the Republicans.

David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom allegedly said that Romney has the unique distinction of "uniting all of England against him" (after Romney's disastrous trip to Europe).

Meanwhile, Obama's experienced a significant drop in world public approval since he took office.

So, why should the US care? Because there's a huge, beautiful world out there and just as capitalism provides a ready-made laboratory for testing out different business models, so does having different countries provide a ready-made laboratory for trying out different economic and political models. However, it's difficult to interpret the results of these experiments if we never look at them. The world learns from the US. The US should learn from the world.