It's way harder to understand US politics than Canadian politics.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Back when I ran the Capitalist Pig vs. Socialist Swine blog, I used to spend most of my posts discussing politics.  That being the case, when A.M. and I started this blog, I figured that I would continue that trend of tending to discuss political issues.  Indeed, I thought I could provide a fresh perspective on US politics being a Canadian that lives in Ohio.

However, I've found that it's a lot harder to blog about US politics than it is to blog about Canadian politics.  First, it's a lot harder to identify what it is that the US government is doing at the moment.  Back in Calgary, if I wanted to see what the government was up to all I needed to do was watch the evening CBC news.  Pretty much everyday there was some coverage of what Parliament was debating or some coverage regarding various political issues.  If the CBC failed me, I just looked up the Hansards and read for myself what people said in Parliament that day.

Down here though, with the exception of C-Span, there really isn't that close coverage regarding what the government is in fact doing.  Instead, what you see on TV tends to be punditry rather than journalism.  Further, it seems like the political discourse in the US tends to be in more general rather than particular terms.  Rather than debate about political possible courses of action the discussion tends to focus on more general issues.  All of this makes it more difficult to discuss particular possible decisions made by the government.  Further, given the US system of committees and the shear amount of legislation being considered at any given moment, it becomes nearly impossible to keep up with what's going on in government in the US.

No wonder it seems that the average American citizen so often seems to have no idea what their government is up to.