US Elections: The Empty Politics of DuopolyNile Bowie, Contributor The haze of American flags, pop music, and confetti worked wonders to mask the absence of any real political substance throughout the election process. Cheering supporters shouted four more years as President Obama took to the stage to deliver his victory speech complete with highly emotional grandiloquence, two mentions of the US military being the strongest in the world, and of course a joke about the family dog. After an exorbitant $6 billion spent by campaigns and outside groups in the primary, congressional and presidential races, Americans have reelected a president better suited for Hollywood than Washington. A 2010 ruling by the US Supreme Court that swept away limits on corporate contributions to political campaigns has paved the way for the most expensive election in American history, in the midst of an economic crisis nonetheless. [1] While the US has historically exported democracy promotion through institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy (trends that have accelerated under the Obama administration), so few see the American electoral process for what it is unacceptably expensive, filled with contrived debates, and subject to the kind of meticulous controls that Americas foreign adversaries are accused of presiding over. A leaked Memorandum of Understanding, signed by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, provides unique insight into the nature of the three televised debates, and the extent to which organizers went to prevent the occurrence of any form of unplanned spontaneity. [3] The document outlines how no members of the audience would be allowed to ask follow-up questions to the candidates, how microphones will be cut off right after questions were asked, and how any opportunities for follow-up questions from the crowd would be disregarded. In what was billed as a series of town-hall style debates where members of the community can come together and ask questions that reflect their concerns in actuality, the two candidates dished out pre-planned responses to pre-approved questions, asked by pre-selected individuals. The political domination of the Republican and Democratic parties over the debates is nowhere more apparent than in the arrest of Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala, as the two attempted to enter the site of the second presidential debate. [4] Despite the obscurity and almost non-existent media presence of third party candidates, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party received 1% of the popular vote in the general election, amounting to over 1.1 million votes, the best in the history of the Libertarian Party. [5] In contrast to the choreographed exchanges offered by the televised debates between Obama and Romney, Moscows state-funded Russia Today news service offered third-party candidates an opportunity to voice their political programs in two debates aired on the channel. [6] Throughout these debates, third-party candidates spoke of repealing Obamas authorization of indefinite detention through the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the need for coherent environmental legislation, the gross misdirection of American foreign policy, the necessity of deep economic restructuring, and the illogicality of marijuana prohibition. In her closing statement at the debate, Green Party candidate Jill Stein brought up a significant point: As President Obama begins his second and final term, some feel that this could be a chance for the White House to pursue more progressive ends an opportunity for Obama to act on his own campaign rhetoric and roll back militarism and the influence of Wall St. financiers. As the United States continues to project itself around the world as the definitive model of freedom and democracy, it is apparent that the central bankers, corporate financiers, and crony capitalists who control Americas electoral system did indeed learn and thing or two from Communism: 