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Ages ago someone suggested I might compare my experience of the Isle of Wight with life in the US and I resisted the temptation (could only lead to trouble) but to the discussion on this site about why some Brits like America and are so optimistic about it, raises (in a few of the links) one of the principal issues I would have raised myself had I addressed the US/US topic with total honesty: everyone in the UK is drunk!

Well, not everyone. But public drunkenness - people shouting in the street drunkenness - is simply much less common in comparable areas of the US.

And I agree as well that Americans take themselves more seriously. Sometimes too seriously for my tastes.

But this seriousness gives individuals an inner strength - a dependability - that some Brits lack.

Again, these are generalisations that cry out to be contradicted by individual examples (drunken American college students, or Gordon Brown's seriousness) but in general I think they ring true.

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This latest ad is a cleverer effort I think at debunking Obama - less angry than the military hospital attempt but sowing the seeds of doubt.

By the way, if McCain does not pick his vice presidential candidate soon when is he going to do it? The Olympics end the day before the Democrats begin. Does he slide through the summer - effectively ceding the fight to Obama while the nation rests - and then try to catch up at the Convention?

Like the Florida strategy of the former New York Mayor. And it might be similarly unwise.

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To TimothyR444 and others who are touchy about commentary on America's rough edges I say suck it up dude! (Only kidding... )

The real point as noticed by one of America's most prominent one-man bloggers, is that the Brits are actually leading the way in pointing out to the world that American faults are generally over-reported and American strengths under-reported.

We are not "pro-American" in the sense of being cheerleaders for a nation and its people (at least Matt Frei and I are not) but nor are we blind to the simple incontrovertible fact that America is a stunningly successful place whose ability to prosper in almost every year since its inception must surely have some link to the energy and vitality of the people who come here and make it work and the system (brutal sometimes) that allows them to achieve their potential.

I agree fully with those who have written to point out that America is complex. But if you are not careful you can end up throwing up your hands (as a British academic once did) and saying everything anyone says about America is true! This won't do.

On a lighter note, strikes me as a rather desperate effort.

How to attack Obama is a tricky issue; Hillary never really found the right tone - this is not it either.

Perhaps .

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Many thanks to allmymarbles for the post on inappropriate behaviour abroad (after the Obama policemen handshake)! Any others out there?

I loved on the visit to the UK, if only for this fascinating fact:

"German has the useful word Tantenverführer: 'A young man of excessively good manners you suspect of devious motives [literally, an aunt-seducer]."

As for the substance of handshake-gate - perhaps Chris_Harrogate and Cyril_Croydon are right or even DominickVila. Though at the White House what would happen if someone tried to grasp the hand of that marine standing by the door? Might not end prettily, particularly if the grasper was a Middle Eastern head of state.

Nemius raises an interesting point about the death penalty and European thought, to which I have no ready answer.

I do think the perceived brutality of some aspects of American life put many Europeans off. They want Americans to embrace the NHS or its equivalent (I write this in my book which I must resist the temptation to plug!) and get rid of their guns.

On the other hand plenty of Europeans - as Nemius writes - may well rather approve of the American way but keep quiet about it or get drowned out in public debate.

Perhaps their moment is about to come as being pro-American is the newest coolest
thing...

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He shook hands with the policemen outside 10 Downing Street!

This is presidential? No way Ronald Reagan would have done it. Was it a nicely Democratic touch or a nervy moment for a man so exhausted that he would have shaken hands with anyone who presented him or herself?

Anyone except a foreign reporter, that is. Or to be more precise a reporter working for a foreign organisation. I see one British newspaper is cheekily suggesting that my friend Richard Wolffe is .

True Richard is British - from Birmingham and still capable of doing the accent (though unaccountably he chooses not to except on feast days) - but his day job is with Newsweek. This was, to the end, a US show.

It could be that Obama chose to shake hands with London bobbies because they were a landmark with which Americans could identify. Less so the Prime Minister Gordon Brown and not at all the leader of the opposition David Cameron whose photo op has been airbrushed out of most US coverage. In both cases the Obama camp knows full well it is bestowing favours, not receiving them.

Did he really cancel a trip to see injured soldiers because cameras were not allowed as alleged by McCain?

If he did, it was a mistake but not a disaster.

An honest assessment of the impact of the trip would have to be: too early to tell. Talk of poll bounces or the opposite is just 24-hour TV nonsense; voters will decide in November based on the totality of their experience of the candidates. The trip plays into that - it matters and overall it appears to have been a success but it will not be decisive.

Incidentally CNN described Gordon Brown as a "Head of State." This mistake - a common one - is part of the reason why Americans often think Brits are uncomfortably nasty to their prime ministers. To American eyes attacking them can sometimes seem unpatriotic - they do not realise that these figures represent a party not the state. Conversely we Brits forget sometimes that Obama and McCain are competing to become America's Queen. As it were...

Meanwhile I have kissed the tarmac at Baltimore Airport and returned to the fray. It is All About to Happen...

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It ain't going to be as easy as suggests, this job of bringing Europe and the US together again.

European enthusiasm for Barack Obama - as witnessed in Berlin - is in part created by hopes that President Obama would be, er, more European. Some feel there is evidence to back up this view.

A good example: was right or wrong in counting Mr Obama as an anti-death penalty enthusiast?

If the man was right, European enthusiasm will be justified and satisfied - domestic issues like the death penalty fuel anti-American sentiment just as much as (in fact probably more than) foreign policy.

But I doubt that Obama is as European as some believe (or the Republicans hope). And he, of course, did not broach the subject.

As for - it was not his strongest.

Does that matter? suggests perhaps not.

And is worth a read for those who like their scepticism Biblically-inspired...

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Already the wiser foreign commentators are cottoning on to a truth about this American election: that it will not reduce hard-core anti-Americanism because hard-core anti-Americanism is unconnected to the policies, stupid. It is in the guts.

The election, meanwhile, is about to burst back into life with the selection of the McCain vice-presidential candidate. Could it seriously be ?

I have said before - the pairing would look like a father and his adopted son. The politics would be irrelevant - the look would be too weird.

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I must say - and I promise not to go on and on and on and on about this - that the other effect of the no foreigners rule in the Obama trip will be to create a somewhat exaggerated view among his supporters of how much of a worldwide bang he is getting for his buck. I have just watched the main evening news here in London and seen not a word from the Middle East.

To read you would think we were all on tenterhooks!!

Again: I do not say it is a mistake electorally - I merely note it as a rather interesting aside to the campaign proper (to which I am enormously looking forward to returning).

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Gosh, I think some of you have over-reacted a tad to my concern about Obama and the foreign press: of course he has the right to do what he fancies and of course foreigners have no God-given fourth estate call on his time and concerns.

My point is a gentler one - that Obama himself might have missed a chance to be different, and I do believe as well that people who deal confidently and ably with a broad range of issues and questions (the ´óÏó´«Ã½ would not ask the same questions as CNN) are often better able to iron out the internal contradictions and wrinkles in their views: it makes a difference and it does so at the level of substance.

But having said that I am quite certain they will choose their moment to talk to us - and as I said in the last post I have every confidence that they make these decisions with sure-footedness. I see are pretty sanguine about it all anyway, so maybe it was just me...

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I have found an Internet connection! It is here at this which has graciously granted me access to the outside world (despite us not staying) and which has - aptly given the conversation since my last posting - statues of Churchill and Roosevelt in the garden.

As I prepare to re-enter the world of the US election I am seized with the fear that the whole thing has gone terribly flat. Hillary versus Barack had a Shakespearian quality that Barack against that other older fellow just does not have. My fear was confirmed by last week - by far the best thing I have seen on this British trip.

I do hope she's wrong. And it is not McCain's fault - in fact the blame is really to be laid at the feet of his opponent. The sudden "ordinariness" of Barack Obama seems to many Brits to have been confirmed by the journey on which he is now embarked, during which he appears to be speaking only to Americans in a manner that is, well, very American and somewhat imperious if not Imperial. As the London Times put it:

"Should any of his hosts be under the illusion that the trip is not primarily a White House campaign event, Mr Obama, 46, is taking no foreign journalists. Instead, he has filled his campaign plane with US reporters, including three television news anchors, who are in discussions to hold prime-time interviews with him on consecutive nights."

I have written before about the brilliance and sure-footedness of the Obama team and as usual I suspect that they know exactly what they are doing in avoiding messy encounters with suspect foreigners. But is this change that foreigners can believe in? Should this not really be delivered by the man himself? Perhaps it is a matter of timing - of doing the job that needs to be done at home before turning to the outside world - but I do hope, and I think it is reasonable for the outside world to hope, that both candidates have some proper encounters with foreign journalists before November. And of course the best way to do that - to be heard in Afghanistan and the UK and indeed back in the US - is to talk to the ´óÏó´«Ã½!

They know my number in the Isle of Wight - though I do hope they haven't been emailing...

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I cannot get excited about the Rev Jesse Jackson - he belongs to another era. Though I agree that

More importantly, on the subject of cars and fuel costs (see recent posts), an American correspondent writes to inform me that more crimes of passion are committed in the US using the motor car as the weapon of choice than are committed with guns! Could this be true? If it is we have stumbled on yet another aspect of the culture of the nation that will be affected by the gas price hikes.

Meanwhile, as I carry on with my short break in the UK, again and again I meet people who are less hostile to the US than might have been the case even months ago.

Writing a (´óÏó´«Ã½-sanctioned!) - not a hagiography but a book that suggests that an affection for America is not necessarily a bad thing to have - is now a project seen as only faintly eccentric, indeed close to being acceptable in polite society.

I fear no blogging now for a week or so. I am going to the where it is not done...

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I really was joking about the small towns!

Though not about the isolation people will feel - really for the first time in recent decades - if the cost of driving becomes prohibitively expensive.

My point is that this hits Americans in ways the Britons find difficult to imagine.

A postscript though: a friend of mine who is a director of a British private rail company tells me he is looking for similar companies to buy in the US.

In fact, he is toying currently with buying a major suburban system which is up for sale soon, he tells me, with a view to pouncing if Amtrak is broken up.

Some may see this as an encouraging sign - a realisation in the outside world that there is a real market now for high quality public transport in the US. But the British experience has been - is it fair to say ? - patchy in recent years.

Whether British companies are in a position to provide some minor amelioration of America's transport difficulties, I could not of course possibly comment, since I have not lived in the UK for many years...

And the point remains that if you live in America's glorious interior, my friend the fat controller (that's ) will not and cannot help.

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by definition does not concern anyone reading this blog but it does raise the question of which candidate is likeliest to be successful at bottom-fishing, as it were, in the voters' pool.

McCain's jokes are wooden and elderly but Obama might look way too smooth for non-prime-time. I can't decide.

A thoughtful piece in the Observer newspaper asks whether the real impact of the fuel crisis is that "in effect, America is becoming larger again".

This is the key point:

"That will lead to a more localised economy. To many environmentalists that is a blessing, not a curse. They point out that cheap fuel for industrial transport has meant the average packaged salad has travelled 1,500 miles before it gets to a supermarket shelf.

"'Distance is now an enemy,' said Professor Bill McKibben, author of the 1989 climate-change classic The End of Nature. 'There's no question that the days of thoughtless driving are done.'

"The worst hit parts of the US are not yet the suburbs or the freeways of southern California, but the small towns that dot the Great Plains, Appalachia and the rural Deep South. Even more than the Inland Empire, people in these isolated and poor areas are reliant on cheap petrol and much less able to afford the new prices at the pump. Stories abound of agricultural workers unable to afford to get to the fields and of rural businesses going bust. "

Whole piece .

Britons used to being squashed on trains and buses cannot avoid a touch of schadenfreude in their attitude towards the US experience but it certainly is true that an inability to travel will have an effect on the modern American mind.

Back in the UK this week, on a short trip, I am reminded again how spacious America feels, uncrowded, and un-hemmed in.

But if you cannot move from your small town there is a risk that you will become very bitter and turn to religion and guns and public transport. Except that there isn't any public transport.

Only a few years ago I covered the ending of the rural Greyhound bus service in parts of Texas - I wonder if it'll be back?

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It seems to me that Obama might be able to execute a reasonably cost-free transition of view on Iraq () provided that he is open about changing his mind.

, of course, but the American people have changed their views again and again - backing the war with great gusto at the beginning, before moving against it.

It would be tiresome though if the Obama people claim there is no change. Obama might well be favoured as well by .

Meanwhile, a colleage of mine sends a shot from rural Montana which I find strangely beautiful, but which will concern those who organised the softening of Mr Obama's gun position. Seems not everyone is grateful...

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What can be going on ?

I am still getting through the Health Check postings - lordBeddGelert and others take me (and the Fox News fellow) to task for not living in the real world. What interested me about the piece was his recognition that there was terrible waste in the US system and huge personal investment of effort in the UK system - and that the kind of triumphalist approach (ours is best!) just does not wash. Though I take your point that if I were very very poor I would prefer to live in the UK - and my chances of surviving serious illness (even getting it diagnosed) would surely be higher.

On guns I intend to reflect some of this in the book I am writing about life in the US and for the very reason that sings out from the postings: it's complicated! Guns do not equal violence as the rural posters such as ruralhills point out. And yet they cause terrible bloodshed in an essentially rather peaceful nation as Ozbloke1 rather poetically adds. I am intrigued by the suggestion made by bluejay60 that martial arts training might be an answer.

I must say my cynicism about the Hillary Obama Unity trip (someone wrote to me to suggest Intercourse, PA as the next venue. Err, why, exactly?) somewhat faded as I talked to people afterwards. I now wonder whether she might be VP. I am so fickle.

On Obama's foreign travels I think gunsandreligion gets it right - Americans are sometimes rather isolated but they are not hostile to the outside world. Wish the same could be said of the outside world as it regards America. I think I may well be in the UK when Obama is and it'll be fascinating to see how he goes down. Cross between Jesus and Mick Jagger I shouldn't wonder (MagicKirin would agree) - with only at the Times (he's their US Editor) holding out for the sceptics... Pleasingshareman begs the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to be fairer in its US coverage: we are trying my friend! It takes time. I think overall we are not as hostile as you suggest and nor should we be ....

Peterm99 (Gutsy Gates) says Gates has no veto over war and of course he is right in theory but my point is that in practice at this moment in time he does. The White House would be devastated by his resignation/sacking. The Nixon/Cox analogy is interesting but I suspect that is not the historical place Bush wants to be ....

Finally hiboutoo - you decide !!!!

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