HIT & RUN BLOG

The British chattering classes have long bemoaned the "Americanization" of British politics. The cover of British journalist James Naughtie's book The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency features Tony Blair's head pasted over Grant's on the fifty dollar bill. When former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam lashed out at her former employer, she seethed that Blair made decisions "just like the president of the United States," without enumerating why this was a bad thing. And now the American-style presidental debate has arrived on British shores, a development, says Michael C. Moynihan, that should be welcomed.

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