According to the press Canadians are bored by our election, to quote Lee-Anne Goodman of the The Canadian Press
(CP: "American election making Canada's seem tedious by comparison")
"...it's more of the same - four aging white guys who led their parties in the last Parliament once again making the same old appeals to election-weary Canadian voters..."
"But the American election is hard to tear myself away from. History is in the making no matter which way it goes. It just makes ours seem so meaningless and boring by comparison; just the same old, same old. I'd love it if we had some actual personalities with something to say trying to win the election."
Fortunately, she is right. Usually when an election is tumultuous and exciting it is because the country itself is going through difficult times. All of our really exciting elections have been around crisis - Meech Lake, Quebec Separation, Free-Trade, economic downturns, etc. There is an old curse that says, "may you live in interesting times".
The United States is in a crisis. Their economy is being drained by an endless war in Iraq, industries are shutting down, there is a credit crisis due to the irresponsible actions of lenders, people are without medical insurance. All-in-all it doesn't look really good south of the border.
Why is our election so boring? Stability. Nothing breeds boredom like stability. Our economy is doing better than our neighbours, we have no credit crisis and our unemployment rate isn't so bad.
Don't wish for exciting elections - it's like wishing on a monkey paw. If you get exciting elections, you might not like the reasons that they are exciting.
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