Today we begin a weekly series on the presidential election campaign in the United States that looks beyond the news stories.
By R M Austin
The United States presidential elections of 2012 are refracted through a multiplicity of media and internet outlets, some of them blatantly biased. The impression of a messy and clamorous political situation is reinforced by the relentless and contending claims of the candidates and their surrogates, and the noisy intrusions of an overly talkative punditry. But this is American democracy at work. It is seeking solutions to unprecedented political and economic problems, against the background of a failing economic system,