America: The banal Republican race

Yet again Americans must feel underwhelmed. Has Romney got it in the bag?

If the highlights of the past week or so of the Republican race for the White house are anything to go by, then Americans must be wondering why better qualified people don't seek the nation's highest office.

Governor Perry's 53 second senior moment when he couldn't recall a third government department he'd shut down, and Herman Cain's inability to know that China already has nuclear weapons, according to The Economist, when in fact the People's Republic became a nuclear power a decade ago, were two of them. There were also those sex allegations surrounding the erstwhile frontrunning Cain. And the charge that Mitt Romney had illegal Guatemalan immigrants working on his property's landscaping. The hapless ex-Massachesetts Governor had allegedly hired a lawn-mowing company which supposedly employed certain Guatemalan illegals, according to two 2006 reports from Boston Globe, noted the Daily Caller. 

Since when does any US client (seeking office or not) check out the legal status of every employee of a firm hired to undertake a contract?

This is all so unimpressive. These people are vying for arguably the most strategically significant political appointment on the planet, and their inability to grasp, debate and provide policies for the major issues of the day is simply astounding. Whatever happened to climate change, the housing market, the Palestinian issue, and highly importantly the American debt mountain?

The world watches with astonishment as people of mediocre ability fight it out to challenge an underperforming president leading a debt-laden superpower with a dysfunctional parliament. 

And the real front-runner, the clean-cut goodlooking ex-Governor, Mitt Romney, beats off successive challenges from flawed opponents to progress unhindered to next year's Republican Convention as the party's undisputed candidate.

It would take a major breakthrough from one of his opponents to prevent Romney from succeeding. Given the performance of these to date, it appears there's little likelihood of that.

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