And so it has started again. The best show on earth has started to rumble into gear again, swallowing thousands of journalists, creating millions of pages of print, thousands of hours of TV and keeping the nuttiest bloggers on earth in business (and, of course, giving Rupert Murdoch the chance to poison another 59 million minds by ramping up Fox News coverage and spreading his “neutral and unbiased” opininions over 5 continents). Yes, it’s the American Presidential elections, and this year could be an especially brillant one. If we’re really, really lucky, some of the nuttiest right-wingers ever could turf it out among themselves, turning the whole process of the Republican primaries into one giant freak show that is likely to be more entertaining than anything that Aaron Sorkin has ever dreamed of writing.

The prospect of Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann slugging it out on a stage while Mitt Romney looks on grinning is just too exciting to contemplate, and I envy the nation that has the pleasure of witnessing this thoroughly entertaining process every 4 years. Here in the UK the best we can hope for is one aspiring Labour/Conservative/Liberal candidate calling the other one ‘spent’.

So I raise my glass to you, the happy citizens of the U.S. and especially to Sarah, Michelle and Newt and with baited breath shout

“Bring it on!”