STEPHEN CRANSTON: US elections still matter, even if parties flip their positions
Not much will change in the way the country present itself to the outside world
There will come a point in our lifetime when China nominally overtakes the US in GDP terms. It still won’t be a rich country, as it has about four times as many people as the US, and China’s GDP figures are manipulated by crude economic tricks such as purchasing power parity, so it will not be the most powerful, and certainly not the most influential, country in the world. We are unlikely to see any Chinese institution supplant Harvard or Hollywood, nor can anyone see Mandarin overtaking English (either the Jersey or the New Jersey version) as the world’s leading language. Even with China as titular number one it is hard to see people risking their lives to move there. And few countries, not even Myanmar, aspire to its political system. So US elections matter, especially when they provide a decisive outcome. From the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the direction was towards free markets and smaller governments. Bill Clinton won the presidency in 1992 on the back of his catchphras...
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