Here we are less than a month until voters in the USA take a decision in one of the most unprecedented elections ever to take place in the 'Land of the Free', a decision on the most powerful leader on the planet, a decision that will have global ramifications.
On one side we have Donald Trump, a man who nobody expected to win the Republican Party nomination to be president of the United States of America. A man whose name strikes genuine fear into the hearts of many people because of the very real possibility that he could be President Trump in a matter of weeks. This is an individual who has played to anger itself to get to the position he finds himself in now. He talks about unemployment rising when in fact it's actually been decreasing. He presents a guise of being a successful businessmen yet he inherited much of his money including an infamous 'small loan of a million dollars', and many of his ventures have failed such as Trump Steaks and Trump University. He has mocked the disabled, insulted Mexicans and proposed to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Yet he speaks in simple terms and he presents an apparent easy fix to complex problems and that is seductive. Who doesn't like an easy solution? This reels people in. The reality however is that the complex problems that face America cannot be solved with his solutions.
One must hope that when it comes to Trump, if he is elected, much of what he says will fail to materialise or be implemented. The reality is for him to be able to pass legislation he is going to have to have the support of congress, but considering his unpopularity amongst elected Republicans, let alone Democrats, this will prove difficult. Congress also has the power to override his veto on matters if 66% of its members are opposed. This was illustrated recently when Obama was overridden on his stance towards families suing members of the Saudi Arabian government for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks. Obama called this a 'dangerous precedent', but would we really regard it as dangerous if Trump was the one being overridden?
Hilary Clinton however is no angel. She is someone who has been very heavily embedded in a political establishment that people feel has failed them. As the First Lady, then a Senator, Secretary of State and now the presidential nominee for the Democrat Party. She is an individual who the majority of Americans do not trust and this is not without merit. One only has to look at the use of her own private server for emails whilst working as Secretary of State and her deletion of thousands of emails upon discovery, to see evidence of why this is. As a former naval flight officer rightly said on the Commander-in-Chief Forum on NBC questioning the candidates, if he had done what Clinton had done he 'would be in prison.'
The electorate face the two most hated nominees in history, a strong word to use but a reality nonetheless considering the language I have heard bandied around describing both of them. A lot of voters are making their choice with a heavy heart for what is regarded as the lesser of two evils, Hilary Clinton; nobody I have spoken to is voting for her with enthusiasm.
Whilst many Americans believe that Donald Trump will not be elected we must not be complacent. Politics can be surprising as can be seen by the globally unexpected British vote to leave the EU. Whatever the result, as a republican voter said to me, America needs to question how it has come to the choice that is faced before it now. The United States faces an unholy mess either way but it shouldn't have had to be this way.