Trump versus Clinton will go down in American history as the dirtiest campaign of all time. It seemed at times as though script writers had let their imaginations run wild. But the consequences for democracy in the United States will be long lasting. By SPIEGEL Staff
One could imagine the pilot episode for this series beginning with a fast-paced time-lapse video from the Hudson to the Potomac, music rising dramatically in the background. The flight would start over New York, Manhattan bathed in morning mist, before shooting up Fifth Avenue, banking over the 58-floor Trump Tower and heading out over the countryside to the southwest. The route would take us over New Jersey, past Philadelphia and then Baltimore, where the battle that inspired the US national anthem was fought -- land of the free, home of the brave. Finally, we would reach Washington D.C., the river, the Watergate building, the proud Mall with its monuments, the dome of the Capitol and then, the center of power, the White House.
It would make for a dramatic beginning of the series with the working title of "Dirty Duel" or "Sad!" or perhaps, more prosaically, "The Next President." Or simply "Trump versus Clinton." It would ultimately be a tragedy, but one with so many twists and turns, sudden mood swings, absurd side stories and crazy coincidences that it could pass as fiction. It would feel like a television docudrama written by screenplay writers who let their fantasies run wild.
On Tuesday, the final episode of the series will be filmed -- when American voters go to the polls to elect their country's 45th president. Up until a week ago, the race had seemed over. The attempt by New York real estate mogul Donald Trump to transform himself from a political nobody into the most powerful man on the planet looked as though it had failed. This Twitter-clown's dream of launching a cultural revolution and installing his own unique interpretation of American democracy was over. But then, it wasn't.
The bewildering stories about incorrectly forwarded emails and/or emails hacked by Russian agents returned. The head of the FBI suddenly looked like a shady Trump stooge and this other guy from New York, the one who has a penchant for sending obscene selfies to assorted women, returned to the stage together with his beautiful ex-wife, who by a quirk of fate just happens to be one of Hillary Clinton's top advisors. In short, the final days of the campaign became so insane that, as a Washington Post columnist wrote, one feels like the figure in Edvard Munch's famous painting "The Scream." And one is tempted to scream: Stop! Enough!
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/us-presidential-campaign-concludes-in-farce-a-1119830.html
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