Elections? Here's How You Do It, Mate

SYDNEY

From our downunder perspective here in Australia, the United States is all about choice. Everywhere you look, there are so many options. The huge variety of breakfast cereals in the average American supermarket is enough to make me feel like I've just escaped the Soviet Union circa 1958. It's the same with your presidential politics; the spectrum of candidates and political ideologies you have to choose from is positively dazzling.

By contrast, Aussie politicians mostly tend to follow the Henry Ford principle, slightly modified: "Any color you like, as long as it's beige."

We recently had an election here, and the whole thing was like that, pretty beige. We had precisely two candidates, and they were barely distinguishable, except that one headed the Liberal Party (the main conservative group) and the other was the candidate of Labor (founded by the union movement). Our entire federal election campaign lasted exactly six weeks -- a long slog, according to pundits and voters alike. After a month, most people were moaning, "I just want it to be over!"

So you can see why, to us Aussies, your two-year process, from candidate announcements to Inauguration Day, might seem a tad excessive. If not downright, well, absurd.

This past summer in Iowa, I had the chance to size up most of the current crop of U.S. presidential candidates, and I had to wonder how on Earth you're going to choose from this most diverse field ever of would-be presidents. Gadding about the Hawkeye State, I saw Rudy Giuliani and John McCain working the crowd with one-liners, Bill Richardson cornering people in dark alleys at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, and Sens. Chris Dodd and Joe Biden explaining how the six or seven candidates ahead of them in the polls were going to crash and burn just like Howard Dean in 2004.

For reasons nobody could explain to me, your candidates have to prove that they have what it takes to make snap decisions on whether to launch a nuclear first strike by spending a year and a half pretending to enjoy greasy diner food for the cameras in places like Ottumwa. What in the question "You want cream in that coffee, honey?" helps when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs says, "Mr. President, we need to know your answer, now!"

Then there's the Iowa caucus itself. How can you have so much riding on a daffy ritual where someone can turn up at a church hall at 6:30 p.m. on a midwinter's night supporting, say, Bill Richardson, then head off merrily at half past 8 as a delegate for Hillary Clinton? The collective malleability of mind of a hundred thousand Iowans has been making or breaking presidential hopefuls since 1972 and Ed Muskie.

Maybe you're wondering why an Australian would care. Well, the bottom line is that decisions made by your president (or officials he appoints) have a direct effect on how much money is in my pocket; there are millions of Australians paying higher mortgage interest rates right now because of the greater cost of global credit in the wake of the U.S. subprime meltdown. Also, ever since a bloke named MacArthur skipped out of Manila and set up shop in the Northern Australian city of Brisbane to fight the Japanese from a more discreet distance, we've had a foreign policy remarkably similar to yours. We're much obliged to you for saving our skins when Mother England abandoned us to the advancing Japanese army in 1942. And we've shown our thanks by loyally standing alongside American GIs in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Overall we're pretty happy with the deal. It's a form of insurance; like helping your older brother do his chores, knowing that in return he'll stick up for you in the schoolyard. Should Japan get an army again and a taste for kangaroo meat, we know we can count on you to step in, if for no other reason than to protect some of those intelligence facilities we let you set up here. But here's the thing: If we're going to keep taking out the trash for you in Tikrit and trimming the lawn in Kabul, let's see, in honor of the deep and abiding friendship between our great nations, what we can do to improve your electoral system. I think it's fair to say that if, after two years of campaigning and about a billion dollars in spending, the majority of Americans still decide to stay home on Election Day, then something ain't working.

Here's how we do it in Australia.