Foreign leaders...
April 05, 2005 @ 02:57 AMI love the way the British government works in a lot of ways. I recommend watching C-SPAN one night when the House of Commons is on. Could you imagine if the President of the United States actually had to debate with opposing political leaders every time the congress was in session? I don’t know that that’s exactly how it works in the UK either, but every time I turn on the House of Commons broadcast, there’s Tony Blair, going nose-to-nose with his main rival.
Tony Blair is a topic of some interest to me. For one thing, I think he’s a great leader, as far as personal characteristics go. He seems extremely honest, transparent, strong, and smart. Unfortunately in America, our political system allows for the perception of stupid, weak, and dishonest leaders. Not to say they ARE, but they come off looking that way. Tony Blair also supports the Iraq War, which was the right thing to do. He had to know that doing so would come with a high political cost, and if recent polls bear out, it will have costed him and his Labour Party greatly. But he did it anyway. Because it was the right thing to do.
On the other hand, the vast majority of his policies I strongly disagree with. His party is taxing the public to death, the national healthcare system set up by his governments is bleeding the national treasury dry and is a disaster—as almost all national healthcare systems are.
I say all that because elections are coming up here soon, and for the first time in a lost time, the opposition Conservative party has a serious chance at winning a large amount of seats. It’s way to early to say that Tony Blair’s position is in jeopardy, as it’s probably not. But he does face the possibility of losing a LOT of seats in the house to conservative candidates. And I don’t know how to feel about that. I LIKE Mr. Blair, and I like his foreign policy decisions. But his policies, which don’t directly affect me anyway, are horrible. So, I don’t know who to root for.
On the other hand, Australia’s conservative Prime Minister John Howard is kicking ass down there, Australia’s economy is flying, and the people love him. I think he’s my favorite foreign world leader at the moment.