A View from Canada of the US Elections

I have heard a few American newspeople saying, what is the point of 
even having a convention these days, hardly anyone watches it and the 
candidates have already been selected. I did watch parts of the 
democratic convention and saw Kerry's daughters speaking. It seems a 
bit weird that the wives and children and even Kerry's brother gave 
speeches at the convention, unfortunately I missed the speech made by 
Mrs. Kerry. I have only seen small clips of some of her speeches but I 
am actually quite impressed by her direct and down to earth style. I 
got a kick out of her telling a reporter to shove off.

In Canada it is so different the wives of Prime Ministers and those 
running for election rarely speak in public and usually do not 
campaign on behalf of their spouses. There was one exception Margaret 
Trudeau, who used to get into all kinds of hot water with some of her 
remarks, but then she did suffer from instability and nervous 
breakdowns.

It was interesting to read the 2 reports on the March in NYC and about 
the 2000 arrests! Democracy seems to have vanished. It seems so weird 
requiring protesters to have ID cards and then treating them like 
criminals. How awful to have so many police everywhere. Is the city 
back to normal yet?

Most Canadians are hoping that Kerry will win and we just can't 
understand how anyone could vote for Bush - are these people wearing 
blinders? Our thinking is that anyone would be better than Bush. Looks 
to me that Kerry does not have good advisors. What is the point of 
spending so much time defending his Vietnam record and then all these 
swift boat ads and attacks? He should be talking more about the 
economy and health care not about stuff from 30 years ago. When will 
the debates be held between Kerry and Bush?