An Admirable Folly

by Denis MacShane

From afar, America’s presidential contests often look more like playground antics than a shining example of democracy. But looks can be deceiving.

Every four years, when the British and other Europeans watch with shock, awe, and incomprehension the presidential contest that convulses the United States, I’m reminded of President Julius Nyerere’s joking retort decades ago to American visitors who criticized his ­one-­party state in Tanzania. The United States is a ­one-­party state too, he would say, but since America is so big, it takes two parties to do the job. Nyerere saw no real difference between America’s two major political parties and nothing much at stake in its elections, a view typical of the mid-­20th-­century socialist tradition he absorbed as a student in England and one that still informs views of American politics from across the ­Atlantic.

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