The well-worn advice that polite guests should avoid politics and religion at the dinner table surely must apply with renewed vigor to the chief executive of an information company which prides itself upon and is constitutionally bound to maintain its independence and freedom from bias. The polite and editorially-minded shall not be disappointed in me. However I must confess that I have found this to be a difficult rule for me to obey during the past seven years. My friends and family know why.
What is fully in keeping with the Reuter Trust Principles is for me to observe that the American political system with its seemingly endless and moneyed build-up has now served up a genuine choice for the electorate. Purists will no doubt complain that the two-party system already represents a political bias in that it excludes many along the political spectrum from the American Communist Party to the American Nazi Party. This is no doubt true but like many things American the system focuses on the pragmatic: who can really be elected?
I shall cast a personal and private vote this November but as flawed as the electoral process surely is I am grateful that I have a clear choice to make.
Tom I envy you when you say ‘… I am grateful that I have a clear choice to make’. I have long time ago decided not to pursue a career in politics which to me implies that ‘I have no choice’. However one of my hobbies is to follow the political news. I have not missed a single episode of this fascinating soap the American primaries. I am grateful I have something interesting to watch and that keeps me from going to bed before 4 am GMT. I don’t usually vote but I like to predict who will be the winners. When I learnt that Hillary Clinton was one of the democrat candidates the first thing I thought was that the the democrats against all the odds ruined their chances of winning the white house. Then I refined my prediction and predicted that eithe McCain or Romney would be the next president. I can now refine a little further my prediction. I hope you won’t be disappointed with the outcome of this campaign in November. Antonio Rosario