No hope for America or the world in this poll

THE world dodged a bullet when Malcolm Turnbull refused to endorse Kevin Rudd’s tepid candidacy for the UN Secretary-General’s job.

It is sheer hypocrisy for any in the Labor Party, which once rejected Rudd, to claim the nation owed Rudd anything, though Turnbull should not have dithered.

It is sheer hypocrisy for any in the Labor Party, which once rejected Rudd, to claim the nation owed Rudd anything, though Turnbull should not have dithered.

 The world will not get off so easily, however, when the Americans go to the polls in November to select their next president.

 There is a Melbourne Cup field in the running for the UN slot but only two will stand for the US presidency, a job of equal if not greater importance than the Secretary-General position and the outlook is bleak.

 I’ve been in the US for the past week watching the splintered Democrats attempt to rewrite history and position Hillary Clinton as the rightful heir to the joint legacy of her husband, former US President Bill Clinton, and the current office holder Barak Obama, in the contest against the fractured Republican Party’s reality show candidate Donald Trump.

 This has become a race of the weakest credentialled candidates in modern times.

 Neither candidate has an impressive history in public office or in business and yet one is on target to lead the most powerful nation in the world from next January.

 Even the indisputable fact that Hillary has become the first female presidential nominee of any major party (wow, the US will have a president who knows what it’s like to be pregnant) was not enough to stop members of her own party from demonstrating against her at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and in support of her defeated party rival, the socialist Bernie Sanders.

 Not only did Sanders’ supporters adopt the “lock her up” chant favoured by Trump’s backers, they also burnt the American flag within the precinct of the conference centre.

 Just as Australian voters held their noses when they went to the polls on July 2, US voters will also fight nausea when they cast their votes.

 A June 26 Pew Research Center survey found 24 per cent of Americans are “satisfied with the way things are going in this country today”; 71 per cent are “dissatisfied”.

 While both candidates fight to win approval and trust, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has shown that both Clinton and Trump are disliked by more voters than any nominee in the past quarter-century.

 The US political process is little short of the greatest beauty parade on earth.

 The candidates’ promises are ­either as vague as pouting bikini girls’ hopes for world peace or they are ­totally unachievable.

 Designed for the television viewing audience, the conferences skirted the big issues except in the sketchiest references.

 Though an IS supporter captured global headlines when he beheaded a French cleric during a Mass at a Normandy church during the Democratic convention, the Islamist uprising was not mentioned.

 And while US cops have been murdered by black racists spurred on by the Black Lives Matter movement, Clinton chose to invite the mothers of seven black men who have lost their lives in contentious circumstances while ignoring the families of scores of police officers killed in the line of duty.

 There can be no doubt that under Clinton, America will take a left turn.

 Under Trump, it may stay the course, but he remains a totally untried ­element.

 In a serious blow for Australia, and other Pacific trading nations, both Trump and Clinton have bowed to populists and promised to block the Trans Pacific Partnership — Clinton yet again reversing an earlier position of support for the trade deal.

 It is becoming increasingly evident that Americans will be looking to the checks and balances built into the Constitution and resting with ­Congress to protect them from the excesses of the next president, a person — no matter whom is chosen — they already distrust.

 Clinton has vowed to protect Obama’s disastrous legacy and try to reinterpret the eight years of her husband’s failed presidency while Trump is set to pursue a course which his own history suggests will be ­shallow and reactionary.