IT is difficult to imagine a would-be politician in the UK saying “vote for me, I used to be a PE teacher”, and harder still to imagine a crowd going wild in response.

As slogans go, it’s up there with “vote for me, I am physically ­capable of procreation”, or “vote for me, my wife loves me”, or “vote for me, I briefly held a gun on behalf of the government.” All three of which, it seems, are also effective ways of winning a sympathetic hearing from political crowds in the land of the free.

Yes, last week I was watching the ­Democratic National Convention (DNC). ­British party conferences are curious enough beasts.

But everything is bigger in America, and the DNC has spent four solid days ­projecting happy warrior energy at the world, determined to survive Joe Biden’s (above) final wobble and tear into the ­upcoming ­presidential election with gusto.

In ­principle, this seems like the right attitude to take. The whole world has a stake in the Terracotta Weeble wobbling to a second ­defeat come November.

But dipping into American politics ­during election year is like an out-of-body experience. You can understand most of the words their politicians and pundits use, if not how they’ll land with the ­average American voter. But the overall effect melts at the edges into something entirely surreal. Some of this is about policy – god, guns, manifest destiny. Much more of it is about affect.

There’s still a lot to be said for the old ­observation that Britain and America are two nations separated by a ­common ­language. If you peek into European ­elections – even if you can parlay your high school modern languages into ­understanding snatches of the debates – the linguistic differences put you on ­notice that you aren’t following the political ­conversation in the same way as a native.

It’s the superficial accessibility of ­American politics which so often makes it such a false friend and which makes the ­different style in which politics is ­transacted there so discombobulating. And I’m not just talking about the Wisconsin delegation dressing in cheese hats made of foam rubber – though I have thoughts on that too – but the emotional saturation characterising it all.

Mega-church

The DNC isn’t a political event in the ­ordinary sense of the word, but a kind of mega-church experience,........

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