We can embrace presidential elections and the Oscars,but the NFL is too risky to adoptAnyone tempted to assume that the influence of the US is in terminal decline should pull the duvet over their heads for the next few weeks. For we are entering one of those times of the year in which America’s soft power dominance of our world is approximately to be comprehensively confirmed in a way that no other culture can come even distantly close to matching. Three imminent events converge in February to make the point.
In the first, America’s presidential election gets serious next week in the Iowa caucuses. The Republican race in specific will rivet the attention of the global political class. Which is a tiny bit odd, and since the campaigns of the final two Republican winners there,Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012, crashed and burned shortly after their apparently significant victories in Iowa.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com