An odd thing about reporting on the US president’s State of the Union address is that the press sit high behind him, virtually unable to see him. At this year’s, Barack Obama’s last, I could just about look down on the top of his head and side from a tight angle if I leaned forward on tiptoe. “It’s the worst seat in the nation,” said one old hand, mindful that TV viewers can see Obama up close.
But from that vantage point you can observe the majesty of America’s body politic: the military generals, the supreme court judges, the row upon row of Congressmen, some applauding enthusiastically, others sitting on their hands and scowling, others yawning or taking selfies. All, however, were pleased to hear Obama declare America the powerful nation on the planet, spending more on its military than the next eight nations combined.
“Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” he went on. “No nation attacks us directly, or our allies, because they know that’s the path to ruin. Surveys show our standing around the world is higher than when I was elected to this office, and when it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead - they call us.”
So here I was at the Capitol in the vaunting Rome of our times, five months after being greeted in Mubuga, a remote village in Burundi, by ceremonial drummers and dancers and making a speech about what I was there to write about. The village has never had electricity so its residents must rely on candles, lanterns, firewood and charcoal. I visited many such places during six years as Africa correspondent of the Guardian; now I am based in its Washington office, a short walk from the White House.
This is how it goes as a foreign correspondent, shifting from the world’s poorest continent to its richest, from constant sunshine to bone-chilling cold, from roving around nations that many outside Africa would struggle to find on a map to reporting on the world’s most famous politician pardon a Thanksgiving turkey. It’s stepping into another man’s shoes like a new Doctor Who.
This particular regeneration involved two marathon flights, chasing two jetlagged toddlers around a hotel lobby at 4am and all the usual teething troubles of a new house with broken fridge and no hot water. But arriving with young kids is a good way to dive straight in rather then dwelling on the shock of the new. Washington lacks the hustling vibrancy of downtown Johannesburg but the parks, playgrounds and zoo are superb, the Smithsonian museums world class and the view of the national mall from the Lincoln memorial quite sublime.
In the suburbs of Johannesburg where we lived previously, front gardens are invisible behind crime-conscious high walls; in Washington, we arrived just in time for the spectacle of Halloween, when many front gardens display pumpkins, giant spiders and skeletons and mock graveyards. In the suburbs of Johannesburg, the car is king and walking a rarity; in Washington, we are glad to be on foot, bus and underground train. Restaurants stay open later too, but dining out and hiring a babysitter is financially ruinous.
Some differences come as a surprise. While the internet here is a high-speed treat, I realise that Africa is light years ahead of America in online and mobile banking. Washington has forced me to dust off those quaint items, the chequebook and the fax machine. It’s like being catapulted into the 20th and 22nd centuries all at once.
Professionally, certain aspects of this job are not so different from the last. Two burning issues in America are inequality and race, just as they were in South Africa. Soon after arriving in America, I reported on protests by black students spreading across university campuses, a trend shaking South Africa at almost exactly the same time. South Africa is notorious for violent crime, but 30,000 Americans are killed by guns every year. The mixed race Obama’s first taste of political activism was the anti-apartheid movement while mixed race Trevor Noah, South Africa’s top comedian, now hosts The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Sometimes, these countries rhyme.
Indeed, whereas some African governments are the embodiment of opacity, with spokespeople who seldom return journalists’ calls, America presents itself as a model of transparency with daily press conferences broadcast online and transcribed word-for-word. Yet at second glance, these briefings can often be an elaborate dance in which the spokesperson reads “talking points” from a script, sprinkles a few crumbs and pleads ignorance to questions of substance. The facade of open government has been established, but what have we truly learned?
Likewise, on the surface at least, an American election is regarded as a cheating and corruption-free paragon compared with several polls I covered in Africa, where the question was not who would win but how many people would die. But it should be remembered that the rival frontrunners this time are the spouse of an ex-president and a billionaire demagogue. If this scenario played out in Africa, the watchdogs would decry another tawdry case of nepotism and elitism.
Indeed, while US presidents may respect term limits in a way that some African leaders still do not, the political system has its own toxic mix of disenfranchisement, donors, gerrymandering, lobbyists, spin, vested interests and Fox News. It’s just that, after more than two centuries, it’s more subtle and insidious than a tinpot dictator sending in the tanks. For journalists, it can be a knottier code to unravel.
One of the greatest challenges for the media in this election is Donald Trump, who defies all the known laws of political physics. He has made offensive comments about women and Muslims and uttered demonstrable falsehoods, which under normal rules ought to be enough to scuttle his candidacy; instead, it only appears to make him stronger with supporters who ask, don’t all politicians lie? His is a candidacy based on celebrity, and so the media are complicit in its rise; but Trump is undoubtedly news, so how can he be ignored?
I met a veteran Washington correspondent the other day who said he thinks opinion polling has destroyed political journalism in America. There is an obsession with the “horse race” - who’s up, who’s down - to the detriment of understanding the candidates, their personalities and their policies. And after several recent failures, it will be intriguing to see if the pollsters are leading us up the wrong path.
Unlike in Africa, I am one of many Guardian journalists in America, but as a beat it is uniquely intense. People everywhere are more or less familiar with it through film, music, television and others forms of soft power. When something happens in Syria or North Korea or Mali, the media want to know: what does Washington think, what will Washington do? I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
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