‘It’s an odd thing being in two different parts of Middle America for a fortnight. Most of those who choose to come to America come to the wonder of New York, of Boston, San Fransico or LA, or to the Grand Canyon, the Cape, Florida or California. To be in Denver and, more particularly, St Paul and Minneapolis, is a salutary experience.

You feel it hard. America is living in the past, a past of consumption, fatty foods, garish television, weight reduction ads, depression relief pills, gas guzzling freeways and a dependence on splurging out 25 per cent of the entire world carbon emission totals.

Travelling bumper to bumper, rat race to the workplace for 50 minutes each way, six lanes of traffic clogging the freeway, with many more trails of such traffic glimpsed from the side windows.

Parking in vast multi-storey carparks that dominate the city centres, a short walk through massive yet inefficient security into great icy barns in which these conventions take place and are reported.

This sort of living, which huge numbers of Americans experience every day of their lives, is NOT the future. There is no soul, no touch with nature, no brush with fresh food or fresh air.

The sheer cost of maintaining a building at 15 degrees C when it’s 23 outside must be monumentally wasteful, and everyone of the skyscrapers, office blocks, malls and convention centres you see are up to the same stuff, freezing inside against a perfectly manageable temperature outside. There’s not a single opening window in Minneapolis.

Yet for the first time I have heard politicians on both sides at last calling for an end to America’s dependence on foreign oil. But there is still no clarion call for a Manhattan-style project to find alternative energy sources.

So yes, being here at this crunch moment in the life of America is, er, a kind of a treat. But you know something, you feel neither of these competing teams is offering a big enough vision for what’s needed to change America.’

Jon Snow, September 4th 2008

Jon Snow — British newscaster and all-round eccentric national treasure — writes daily news summary emails for Channel 4. He’s currently in St Paul covering the RNC and in his coverage of Sarah Palin’s speech from yesterday included this rather striking summary of middle America.