Editorial: Lessons from the US presidential race
But the sheer volume of reportage on the US presidential election is not really necessary, especially in "international" media outlets. In fact, it's a symptom of both lazy journalism and the codependent relationship between modern politics and media.
We, the international audience, can at least be thankful that we don't live in early primary-holders Iowa or New Hampshire, where residents have been besieged by political advertisements, drive-by baby-kissings and staged "town-hall meetings" for months.
There's nothing to be done about it, of course, but there are lessons to be learned. Not least of these is that the political system in Poland is not as bad as it's often made out to be.
The 2008 presidential race in the US is bound to be superlative - the longest race in US history, the most expensive (probably) and so on. Poland's elections, by comparison, seem trifling. That's a good thing. While the hype surrounding Polish elections has grown over the years, the clamor will hopefully never approach that of the US' elections.
Critics in this country lambasted parties during October's parliamentary elections for dirty campaigning and negative advertising. Then again, the campaign tricks deployed in Poland pale in comparison with American-style skulduggery - take, for example, the 2000 "polling" campaign against then, and current, presidential candidate John McCain, in which conservative Southern voters were asked if they would vote for McCain if they knew he had an illegitimate black daughter (which he does not). The Polish version of this trick - insinuations that a candidate has German or Jewish heritage - is losing popularity on the national level as the democratic system matures, and this trend will trickle down to the local level sooner or later.
Meanwhile, the electoral college - the voting system employed in US presidential elections - is inferior to Poland's two-round system. The US system creates the illusion of a popular vote, which doesn't appear to bother most Americans, when in fact each vote is cast for a party-affiliated elector who then votes for the party's presidential candidate but is technically free to vote for whomever he or she likes. Moreover, as the 2000 election in the US showed, a candidate can win the electoral vote but lose the popular vote. There are numerous other instances in which Poland's maturing political system is on par with, or better than, the American system. The Polish media will doubtlessly point many of these out over the next 11 months and observers of the international media can draw their own conclusions.
While its appetite for fuels is growing, the Polish locomotive is threatening to run out of steam. This is, of course, not an isolated case. Maintaining energy supply - and security - is vital for every country.
In Poland, however, the range of challenges is particularly broad and complex. Yet little of note has been done to tackle the issue.
The dominant energy source in Poland, the coal industry, has long suffered from poor management and underinvestment. Incendiary relationships between labor and management, characteristic of the industry, come to a head every few years, as they have recently in the Budryk mine strike. These issues need to be dealt with properly, not just treated with quick fixes. New investments in power plants and infrastructure are direly needed as well, and years of neglect make it all the harder. But Poland cannot continue rely on coal to the extent it does now. EU energy policy now requires that each member state increase the share of renewables in its energy usage by 20 percent by 2020, while CO2 emission limits will drop by 20 percent.
Even the CO2 emission limits which Poland faces from 2008-2012 - 208.5 million tonnes per year - threaten to restrict a number of industries, including energy production and construction. The country's continuing development is heavily reliant on these two sectors.
Regardless of whether the emission limits are fair or not, they are pushing Poland to develop new energy technologies such as clean coal or renewable energy sources. But the implementation of these technologies is a long-term goal and uncertainty remains as to their sustainability. Tempting as it seems for many, nuclear energy is a distant prospect as well - 2015 would be the earliest Poland that could receive energy from a proposed reactor in Lithuania.
Energy security is another urgent issue. Poland took valuable steps last year, strengthening cooperation with Ukraine, Lithuania, Azerbaijan and Georgia. It was also invited to join the International Energy Agency. Serious tasks lie before Poland, however, with Russian gas supplies especially crucial. Poland's authorities need to display wisdom and determination in tackling these issues, and a long-term energy policy, worked out in cooperation with the European Union, is necessary. Otherwise, the Polish locomotive may even slip into reverse.
