The Dirty Race For The White House (C4): WHAT political commentator Peter Osborne told us in his investigation of American democracy won't have come as a great surprise. Voters today tend to regard politicians with suspicion rather than awe.

Put simply, we don't believe half they tell us whether they're in power or opposition. Promises made at election time are, we fully realise, as likely to be discarded as implemented.

As Bush and Kerry fight for the job of most powerful man in the world, Osborne asserted that the US presidential election would be decided by just a handful of voters in key swing states and that both sides were using "the darkest tools of political persuasion to sway a small group of largely ignorant voters".

He suggested that American democracy operates on smears and lies, appealing to special interests while ignoring whole swathes of the population. Basically, he was stating what many have long suspected and, of course, this isn't restricted to the US.

Every vote doesn't count there, he said. Barely one million voters - half a per cent of one per cent of the adult population - will decide who ends up in the White House.

Methods used to persuade voters range from having Bush filmed on tour in front of men in uniform (to plant the idea of him as a leader) to Kerry, the most anti-gun presidential candidate in history, being presented with a gun during a trip to a state where 1.2m people are licensed hunters.

Osborne painted a picture of the American electorate as uninformed and ignorant, although I'm not sure he'd meet with greater success if he asked people in the street here to point to Iraq or Afghanistan on a map.

Perhaps it doesn't matter who wins, as he demonstrated that both candidates were promising much the same thing. They are reaching for the same people and, therefore, made the same promises to win them round.

Many campaign commercials stretched the truth, but surely this is only what we expect - false statements and misleading statistics designed to frighten and coerce.

The church was being used to influence voters with abortion and gay marriages as the hot issues. One congregation was told that "they're coming out of the closet and trying to get in your kids' closet".

An Ohio radio show host - described as a friend of the presidential advisor known as "Bush's brain" - used the airwaves to peddle political propaganda.

Osborne's confrontation with the DJ gave little hope for reasoned political debate, as he was told: "I want all the dirt, all the filth, all the information. I want to know about Kerry smoking pot, about Bush using cocaine, about the sex perversion, the filth, because that way we will make an informed decision."

He rounded off his outburst by declaring "I'd rather have American democracy that the kind of crap you have in Britain."

Published: 02/11/2004