A friend from Toronto sent me this note last night.
"What amazes me as I continue to watch your current presidential season from up here in Canada is just how far off the rails presidential politics has travelled. I am startled that, as a country well north of 300 million people and one as rich and as storied as yours, you couldn't find a way to nominate even one unambiguously deserving candidate, even one unsullied by either legal controversy, demonstrable ignorance and crudity, or both.
That both Ms Clinton and Mr Trump can find themselves positioned on the threshold of the White House today must be a triumph of what can only be an electoral process that has, over the years, become increasingly corrupted by money. Any country whose leader can only be elected after the expenditure of BILLIONS of dollars is one with a dangerously tenuous hold on democratic principles. My sense is that someone with a fertile mind and enlightened ideas but living in obscurity would be a much better candidate than either of the two currently on offer. That your country would settle for anything less than the best should be of great concern to Americans; it really IS of great concern to the rest of the world"