The results of the 2015 UK general election are now officially in the books. With the surprise victory of the Conservatives political pundits and scholars can now begin to study the reasons for the result and its likely consequences. For some in Britain however attention will now shift across the Atlantic to the 2016 US presidential election. Although the British political process is becoming increasingly ‘Americanized’ fundamental differences still remain which make observing US politics a fascinating and somewhat alien experience.
In a short interview in May 2015 the Channel Four journalist Jon Snow and the US satirist Jon Stewart discussed the relationship between the two political systems in the run-up to the UK election. A key difference which Stewart noted relates to the concept of continuous campaigning. This is a phenomenon which, according to the historian Lewis L. Gould, has characterized US politics since Richard Nixon’s arrival in the White House. Interestingly however British observers had actually recognized something akin to continuous campaigning (albeit in a simplified form) as early as the 1820s. A brief examination of the writing of one particular Briton from the period helps to shed light on the history of British attitudes to presidential campaigning and our long standing interest in American politics.
Although subsequently overshadowed by her son Frances Trollope (1779-1863) was one of the most perceptive and entertaining British commentators on the United States during the early nineteenth century. A novelist of some repute Trollope seems to have found America a fascinating subject—at least during the earlier years of her career. She spent a considerable amount of time in the US during the late 1820s and her experiences in the nation formed the basis for her books The Refugee in America (1832), The Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw (1836) and The Barnabys in America, or the Adventures of the Widow Wedded (1843) all of which lampooned different aspects of American life.
