Over the last three years I’ve become obsessed with American Culture, their ideals, habits, and past times. I’ve been particularly interested in the divide between the Liberals and Conservatives of American Politics and how the whole political machine oversees their functions. A machine, that come election year goes slightly mad, with plenty of name calling, back stabbing, skeletons in closets and theatrics worst than your local panto.

However The 2008 Presidential campaign was a panto unlike all the others before it, indeed it was a campaign of several firsts, Barack Obama becoming the first African American candidate nominated by a major party and eventually the first African American President, John McCain became the oldest presidential nominee and Sarah Palin the first women nominated for Vice President by the Republican Party. What struck me as the most obvious difference was the age gap between the two candidates, a huge gap of 25 years, a quarter of a century! Not since Nixon vs JFK had the two candidates represented such two completely different eras. The old fuddy duddy and Vietnam War POW John McCain with his humorous whistle sounding voice, much like an old kettle, against the cool guy, Barack Obama, Obama’s aura became so great at times you could be forgiven in thinking he was the new Jesus or Shaft. At the time Obama seemed to personify change and charisma and on the face of it a man average Joe’s could trust. John McCain, like Nixon, has a demeanour that is at odds with television, a polar opposite to Obama. George W. Bush didn’t exactly help McCain, Bush’s presidency was one of the lowest in popularity in recent memory. In March 2008, Bush endorsed McCain at the White House, but Bush did not make a single appearance for McCain during the campaign. Although he supported the war in Iraq, McCain made an effort to show that he had disagreed with Bush on many other key issues such as climate change. During the entire general election campaign, Obama countered by pointing out in ads and at numerous campaign rallies that McCain had claimed in an interview that he voted with Bush 90% of the time. Ultimately what Obama’s victory boiled down to was a mixture of excellent PR, his own charismatic persona, a financial juggernaut of a campaign team, big enough to run Luxembourg and the many faux pars of McCain/Palin team. Aw where to start, I suppose it all went tits up when McCain decided to choose the Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin as his running mate for Vice-President, a desperate act to gain more popularity and to persuade the hard evangelical christian right to vote for him. She was also chosen because of her youth and together  they looked worlds apart, so different that you could imagine McCain and Palin as a novelty WWE tag-team. This decision did at first seem ingenious, opinion polls in favour of McCain did grow. What McCain didn’t bet on was her lack of experience and knowledge of global issues, she struggled in many of her early interviews and couldn’t even remember her Vice-Presidential opponents name. McCain’s main problem though was basically himself, sadly he’d missed out on presidential elections beforehand thanks to Bush and in the end it was always too late, his temper and agitated state had cost, age had caught up with the war hero. More than a year after his inauguration as President, I believed naively, along with many Americans that Barack Obama would bring immediate change. The year did start well, promising to close down Guantanamo Bay(yet to close officially), bringing in stimulus packages for the economy, designating a pull out date for US troops in Iraq, starting up a Healthcare Plan for the American people and winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his olive branch gestures with rouge sates such as Iran. However Obama has his enemies and they are growing, particularly from the right.  Neo-Conservatives are now labeling him and his policies with any words they can find that insight fear, calling him a fascist, communist, socialist, the anti-christ. His decision making has also been slow, a main factor in the lack of true progress, even his charisma, which was enlarged by the media has faded, he’s now turning boring, into an administrator or maths teacher. His healthcare plan is in the balance due to the fact that conservatives find it un-american and socialist, and yet in the UK we have the NHS. It’s not perfect by any means but it is there when we need it and I don’t see Nazis’ goose stepping down my road or communist rallies in my town square. In the end patience is a virtue, with real change happening over time. Obama deserves some credit for trying to get America out of it’s mess, a mess that he himself didn’t help create. TALKING ABOUT MY USA WORK My USA Elections  Illustrations are based on the media coverage of the US elections at the time as well as my own interpretation of the events. I was particularly interested in the media circus surrounding the apparent aura of Obama and the frenzy created by his campaign. The McCain/Palin relationship was also a big part of my work as well as understanding each candidates very unique characters. By injecting a little satire I wanted to portray McCain as somewhat embarrassed in his loss of popularity and by the mistakes he had made during his campaign. Sarah Palin and her extreme followers at the time represented a nastier side, at one point she did indeed seem to personify the very thing she believed herself to be, ‘a pit-bull with lipstick’. Some of her rallies had elements of the far right to them as well as plenty of false and insulting labeling towards Obama. What I wanted to portray above all else was the unique nature of the event and moments surrounding it. Tom Dench-Layton