Sophie’s CHOICE

I wouldn’t bother. They’re all as bad as each other.” This was the sage ad­vice given to me by my Nan in 1987 after I won­dered out loud who I should vote for in my first ever UK gen­eral elec­tion. Grow­ing up work­ing class in an eco­nom­i­cally de­pressed Liv­er­pool in the 1980s, there’s no prize for guess­ing I didn’t vote for the Con­ser­v­a­tives. To my shock and sur­prise, Mar­garet Thatcher was re-elected as prime min­is­ter in spite of my valiant ef­forts at the bal­lot box. Three years later I was liv­ing over here, where I don’t have a vote, and where my fate lies in the hands of Cata­lan and Span­ish vot­ers – as good an ex­pla­na­tion as any for the ner­vous tic I’ve de­vel­oped over the years.

As the US elec­tion cam­paign rum­bles to its des­ti­na­tion like a lo­co­mo­tive with no brakes (I am writ­ing this be­fore we know the re­sult; check our cov­er­age on page 18), I won­der whether my Nan, who showed about as much in­ter­est in pol­i­tics as the fam­ily dog, may have been right. I hear Trump will de­stroy Amer­ica if he’s re-elected, al­though I’ve also heard that Biden in his own way will do the same if he gets into the White House. By the time this is pub­lished we’ll know, and you could well be read­ing this sit­ting in rags on a pile of rub­ble won­der­ing if boil­ing it might make it more ed­i­ble. I hope that’s not the case, but the thought that you might have to eat my words tick­les some­thing dark and sar­donic in­side me.

Re­turn­ing to the US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, I had a fas­ci­nat­ing in­sight into how po­lit­i­cal lead­ers think when lis­ten­ing to a pod­cast fea­tur­ing an in­ter­view with Pen­ta­gon Pa­pers whistle­blower Daniel Ells­berg (he’s now 89). Episode 35 of the Sci­ence His­tory Pod­cast (it’s usu­ally about sci­ence) punc­tu­ated the in­ter­view with recorded clips of pri­vate phone calls be­tween the then-pres­i­dent Richard Nixon and his close ad­vis­ers and aides. Much more im­por­tant to Nixon than the threat posed to na­tional se­cu­rity or the well­be­ing of the Amer­i­can peo­ple by Ellserg’s leak­ing of the damn­ing se­cret re­port on how the US gov­ern­ment had mis­man­aged the Viet­nam War, the pres­i­dent’s main pri­or­ity was pro­tect­ing his image and cred­i­bil­ity and that of his gov­ern­ment.

I don’t know much more about pol­i­tics than my Nan, or the dog, but I’m guess­ing that over the years, de­mo­c­ra­tic politi­cians and par­ties have adapted – as hu­mans do – and learnt how to skirt safe­guards, ma­nip­u­late rules and take ad­van­tage of loop­holes. In short, how to play the game. They are locked into a sys­tem and their pri­or­ity is play­ing that sys­tem to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity through re­elec­tion. Obama never got round to clos­ing Guan­tanamo and Trump’s wall is still not built but the for­mer won a sec­ond term and the lat­ter is on the verge of doing so (again, at the time of writ­ing). If it is the De­moc­rats who get into the White House I doubt they will solve Amer­ica’s pub­lic health cri­sis or drive the econ­omy into the ground; they’ll be far too busy spin­ning plates (and the media) try­ing to stay where they are.

So Trump or Biden? I’ll go out on a limb and pre­dict it won’t mat­ter much in the grand scheme of things. As my Nan would say: “they’re all as bad as each other”.