White House race has lost all credibility - American presidential race

EVEN if you leave aside the absurd fact that an American presidential race where the two frontrunners — Jeb Bush and Hilary Clinton — represent long-tailed dynasties that have already had their feet under the Oval Office table for two decades, the tremendous sums committed to succeeding President Barack Obama hardly show democracy, or at least American democracy, in an inspiring or reassuring light.

It seems that in the land of opportunity political opportunity comes at an increasingly impossible and alienatingly high price. This must feed into the disenchantment and detachment, the corrosive cynicism too, undermining all democracies, including our own, right around the world.

Unless a challenger, either Democratic of Republican, arrives on a white charger then next year’s campaign will have more in common with England’s definitive struggle for power, the War of the Roses — 1455 to 1487 — than it will have with participatory, admirable or contemporary democracy. Should a challenger emerge from either flank that person and their supporters, will need very, very deep pockets. American presidential campaigns are now the exclusive preserve of the super rich and the super connected.