Running For Suckup-In-Chief
Running for president is an all good news all the time game, writes Kinsley in the LA Times, with loads of coddling of the voters by candidates:

Is there any other democracy where the voters are as spoiled as they are in the United States? Especially, of course, in certain states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, where the old joke is literally true about the citizens who say they haven't yet formed an opinion about a candidate because they've only met the fellow a few times. But even voters in the rest of the country -- if their votes have any relevance at all after the residents of Iowa and New Hampshire have their say -- are coddled in many ways.

Consider just a couple. The conventions of political rhetoric in other nations don't ordinarily require candidates to assure their audiences that they are the greatest people on Earth, or possibly the greatest people in all of history, as every politician seeking national office in the U.S. must.

...More generally, modern American politicians almost never use their campaign rhetoric to deliver bad news or to challenge the citizenry. Every problem we have -- to the extent that such a wonderful nation as ours can have any problems -- could be solved by a tax cut for you or a tax increase for someone else.

America's problems today are not all that different from those of Europe. But the rhetoric is completely different. Chancellor Angela Merkel told Germans on New Year's Eve that Europeans faced the "harshest test in decades." And 2012, she said, "will no doubt be more difficult than 2011."

..."Austerity" is what every European politician says is necessary. Have any of this year's Republican presidential candidates (save Ron Paul) used this word, except dismissively or with a sneer? Has President Obama? This is partly because of a legitimate debate in the U.S. about how much austerity is needed, if any. But if and when a dose is needed, the American politician will have a hard time administering it -- and the American voter will be completely unprepared for the sting.