What's all this about US politics, then?

(Please see UPDATE at end.)

I really don't want to endure 11-months of endless debate about who is going to become the next US President. Of course I'm interested in the outcome and whoever it is will likely have a considerable impact on many people outside of the US, including in our li'l ol' country. After this post, however, I shan't be commenting on the upcoming US Presidential election until the candidates of the two major parties, Republican and Democrat, are formally selected at their respective cconvention in the summer. That'll still give three or so months to debate the topic to death.

Anyway, I saw this quiz at Doctorvee and thought I'd try it to see where it rated me. Not being an American some of the questions were, to me, a little obscure, but I'm glad that the person rated top for me is Ron Paul as from what I've been reading for several months he is certainly the potential candidate whose views most closely match my own - he believes in small government, genuinely small government, and the government keeping out as much as possible of the private lives of the citizens who elect it to govern. If I were American and he was a candidate next November I'd certainly cast my vote for him. I really have no idea who I'd vote for if he wasn't available, but from the little I know of most of the rest I'd need a pretty strong drink to persuade me to vote for several of them (particularly Romney, Thompson, Huckabee and Clinton).

60% Ron Paul 59% Mike Gravel 58% Rudy Giuliani 54% Bill Richardson 54% Mitt Romney 52% John McCain 52% Dennis Kucinich 50% Fred Thompson 49% Chris Dodd 47% Mike Huckabee 45% Hillary Clinton 44% Barack Obama 42% Tom Tancredo 42% John Edwards 40% Joe Biden 2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

And that's the last I'll write on this subject until August or thereabouts.

UPDATE: (Monday 14JAN08 17.15 GMT) Ron Paul and gay rights: it just goes to show! Even I, with my caution about writing about US politics, appear to have got it badly-wrong. I wrote above that, were I an American and were he on the ballot in November (which he was never likely to be), I would vote for Ron Paul as President. I must now retract that pledge as one born of ignorance of more complete information about him; not that I was alone in my ignorance of some less savoury information about Ron Paul - see here, here and here (and follow all the links in the third link, too). I don't think anyone realised just how bad George W Bush would turn out to be, particularly before his first election victory; it was widely-believed he would be a 'consenus' politician, based on his record as Governor of Texas. I doubt we yet know all there is to be known about the other potential candidates for President from the two main political parties either! The only thing I think I got right when I first wrote this post was my promise not to write any more until the Democrat and Rebublican nominees for President are selected and 'annointed' at the Party Conferences in the summer.