Fact or fiction? Jeff Greenfield specializes in writing books about alternate (fringe?) histories, covering events like the assassination of both Kennedies and the shooting of Ronald Reagan.

I can’t help but wonder: who is his or her right mind would be interested in something like that in Europe? Well, the Belgian equivalent of Time Magazine wrote an article about this sort of scenarios so I guess SOMEBODY thinks readers find it interesting.

Following and reporting on elections is a real hot news item nowadays. Belgians follow US elections almost as much as we do our own local ones. Why?

I’ve got some theories:

1. They are distracting news from the real issues of people in the United States, Belgium and Europe. Topics like: a credit crunch in Europe, a really bad recession in the U.S., putting food on the table in our home. This sort of blah-blah news items crunches the ambition of people to learn anything new, let alone useful. Instead we buy into the whole conflict rhetoric of political encumbents.AND PEOPLE WANT TO BE DISTRACTED BECAUSE THEN THEY CAN FOCUS ON THE MISERY OF SOMEONE ELSE.

2. Journalists finally have something to report on besides the bad economy. They are so fed up with the economy reports that they figured: “Hey, what the heck? Might as well focus on elections, that’ll be a fun thing to do.” And of course they are right: there is always something to report on during elections. BUT WHY NOT LOOK FOR SOMETHING THAT REQUIRES ACTUAL IN-DEPTH JOURNALISM? LAZY?

3. Politicians only see the upside of course, as always. Steer the focus away from their inability to even comprehend the speed with which our world is changing in both social terms (new middle class growth in India, China,…) and economic terms (borders are being circumvented by money transfers all the time). Instead they get to show their (sometimes misperceived) abilities debating and speaking in public. BASICALLY THE GET TO BE THE POPULAR KID AT SCHOOL AFTER BEING BASHED FOR YEARS ON END BY JOURNALISTS.

You see, everybody wins in an election. It’s just that darn “governing-a-country” stuff that’s so annoying, right?

Fact 1: during the American election (or any election for that matter) the country or any facsimile of it, is run by advisors, not by presidents, mayors or the like.

Fact 2: elections are costing the people of the country a bunch of money, that they might want to spend on food, drink, housing and other basic human needs

Fact 3: debates are so over-prepared at times they seem like a big hoot.

I remember when a journalist interviewed one of the caucus leaders in the House of Representatives at one time. The caucus leader, a well-respected politician with a fantastic track record, said that it is likely for him to have maybe two or three minutes a day to study current affairs and do some strategizing. When the journalist then asked the million-dollar question “But then, who is running this country?”, the politician replied: “Most of the time we let the advisors take care of that.”

Now isn’t that a scary thought? Having a president away from his office for three days, preparing for a debate, and the country being run by his number two, whom you didn’t elect?

Belgium isn’t much different, our elections here are spun all over the media so basically all councilmen are just working to get their faces in the spotlight as much as possible, ignoring the most pressing matters at hand until after the election. Let’s see how a company would survive that sort of attitude. A CEO would be fired on the spot if he behaved like that.

New taxes seems to be the theme of the day in Belgium as well as in the States. Even inaction on the part of the government might increase the tax burden for most families by $2000 by the end of the year. Interesting mechanism: we have elections and then we pay for them, either openly or secretly. Makes me wonder why I became an entrepreneur, having to pay collectively for a popularity contest…

I remember Al Gore, probably one of the best advocates for the collaboration between political entities and business, during the debates against G.W. Bush. He was not himself. Over-prepared as he was, he got blown away by his ad-lib adversary who just had to sit back and relax and wait until the schoolteacher (Gore) got punished by his students. It was horrible to see it happen. Here’s hoping the debates in our countries will be more about the people and less about the politicians and what they said and when they said it.

All in all, I have high hopes for the elections in both our countries. I sincerely believe that most politicians actually are in politics to change something for someone and for the greater good. Like our councilman, Marc Smans, whose son became a paraplegic after a traffic accident, now has the responsibility for safe traffic in our little town. Here’s hoping his good spirit stays afloat amid the storm that are the elections…

Okay, so Romney suggests we suffocate before we burn to a crisp in case of a fire emergency on board an airplane. But how do Europeans perceive this remark? And why does it matter?

My first reaction was: OMG! What is this guy thinking?
Which is of course exactly what the headline wanted me to think.

Then I started wondering about what it actually meant. And soon it became clear to me, that it was not about being right, but about being, albeit somewhat clumsily, humorous. Which I can appreciate.

We (and by we I mean: Europeans) sometimes get the feeling that there is only one valid presidential candidate in the race for the White House, meaning the Democratic one.

HOWEVER: here’s some facts most Americans don’t know about our news cycle and why they matter.

1. Europeans mainly get their news from newswires like CNN and Associated Press.
Having followed their articles on the US election it may be clear that they only see one outcome: democratic re-election. Hardly objective at all. The kicker is that we HARDLY EVER hear about Romney until he makes a mistake in wording or seems to make one (I consider the remark on airplane windows one of the latter, the remarks on who he is going to work one of the former). So be honest, about 99% of ALL journalists in Europe would be considered “Democratically Inclined”. So much for quality and objective newscasts from overseas .

2. We have a totally different society, where middle class citizens hardly are inclined to move upwards.
This makes it very hard for politicians in leadership to steer clear of the compromise. Hence we have a lot of different political parties that shift emphasis all the time (so nobody knows what they stand for) or express extreme opinions (no Tea Party here – the more radical political groups are comparable to the Republicans).

3. We HAVE to vote.
Therefore we hardly take notice of the importance of our vote and politicians are just plain lazy. They hardly listen to their voters because they don’t HAVE TO – they’ll get our vote anyway. How’s that for a twisted view on democracy? In the States at least they need to motivate you to turn out to vote

So I’ll give to Romney and Obama, at least they have to WORK to get elected