By Carol McCracken (Post # 2,686)
“He’s a figure of fun. He’s widely mocked. He’s also scary. He scares the English,” said Alastair Petty,41 years old, earlier today as he and his sister, Juillet, 39 years old, were lunching outside the Hilltop Superette on Munjoy Hill. The English siblings visited Boston last week and decided to take a diversion to Portland when mhn.com saw them and asked about the English perspective of The Donald. They fly back to England this Wednesday.
A scholar of American politics, the articulate Alastair said that despite whatever flaws America may have, “It still has a set of ideals that are held in high regard in the rest of the world. America is still a powerful country, despite some politicians saying otherwise,” he said referring to Trump. Alastair teaches a course on American politics in a public school north of London.
“It’s important to teach this course to our students because of the US constitution. It has a clarity which helps students have a more robust understanding of the separation of powers in the US. Most countries have a single document that codifies the political system. The United Kingdom does not,” this affable Englishman told mhn.com. He went on to say that the United Kingdom has lots of “rules, laws and traditions which guide the system, but not in one document. We can pass laws more quickly than in the US. It’s a benefit and a curse.”
This is the siblings second visit to the US. They were here in 2012 during the Obama campaign for President. “The political climate is very different from when we were here before,” said Juliete, who is in the real estate business at home. “:It lacks the optimism of the Obama campaign in 2012. There has been a deliberate effort to sell pessimism during this campaign,” she said.
Since the two have been in the US for the past week or so, they have noticed a decline in The Donald’s poll numbers that gives them hope he won’t be elected president of the US in the fall.
From the Obama address back in 2008, Alstair quoted: “We need to bend the arc of history.”