US politics has always seemed a little “strange” to people who don’t actually live in the US.
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The long and winding road to the White House is littered with potholes of a political nature that for some reason pits Republican candidates against each other, and Democrat candidates against each other in a gruelling fight that turns quite nasty from about day one.
That process – a travelling roadshow across every state in America – can take as long as five months.
And Australians complained about their prolonged election campaign this year?
Once each party has chosen a successful candidate – in this instance Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – they spend months campaigning up until the general election. This time around it’s November 8.
Where the US election trail becomes a bit of a circus is that candidates can pretty much spend as much as they want (there are no rules on campaign spending) and as has been witnessed this time around, they can also say pretty much anything they want no matter how obscene, obnoxious, rude and untrue.
Donald Trump’s accusations against Hillary Clinton have at times bordered on the outrageous, accusing her of all sorts of scandalous and illegitimate behaviour without as much as a credible thread of evidence to support his claims.
America’s bizarre legal system allows him to freely make those types of claims, which would be borderline defamatory here in Australia.
His fiery rhetoric has already stirred up strong emotions in his home country, and has equally been widely panned by leaders across the free world. Has been accused of being xenophobic, a bigot and sexist.
And his hardline foreign policy is frightening, particularly in terms of his stance against China, Russia and North Korea.
This week, President Barack Obama described the Republican nominee as "unfit to serve as president" and "woefully unprepared to do this job".
It is not compulsory to vote in a general election in the US. In fact, almost half the population choose not to vote. There's a high level of disassociation with politics in the US, which means only the political passionate sometimes bother to vote.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, Trump is currently a 50-50 chance to win the top job. It’s a prospect we all should be concerned about.
