Americans are thinking hard about the direction their country is heading.
As I was coming through immigration, even the Homeland Security officer checking my passport looked at my name and asked if I was related to John Bolton, the former UN ambassador.
On TV, their talk show hosts such as Jay Leno, David Letterman and John Stewart are funny but serious - cutting through the spin to put the candidates to the test.
And they don't do pee, bum, belly, poo jokes either.
Leno and Letterman's wise cracks epitomise what the public is really wondering about their next President.
And what to we get? Jonathan Ross asking David Cameron if he used to masturbate about Mrs Thatcher.
We love to attack the US media such as Fox and MSNBC for bias - but what they are doing is arguing fiercely about the issues and attitudes which will define their nation for the next eight years, teasing out such fundamental issues as race, gender, equality, liberty and power.
Their viewers are being fed food for thought.
I don't know what the BBC thinks it's serving up. But it's not serving the public.
A fugitive in hiding after absconding from prison has emailed his local paper to complain about its "biased" coverage. Derek Watson, sentenced to five years' jail last year on 25 charges of fraud, claimed that the Dundee Courier's report of his failure to return to Castle Huntly open prison after a week-long release was untrue.
It said that Watson had preyed on the elderly and the vulnerable. "This is most certainly not true," Watson said in his email. But a spokesman for the paper pointed out that among Watson's victims were a 73-year-old woman and a 79-year-old man.
The poor man. I hope he has read the Human Rights Act and is ready to sue.
Jonathan Ross appears to be a typical example of his kind - an arrogant bully who perceives no sense of public duty despite being paid vast fortunes from the public purse. And the BBC is stonewalling in the hope the affair will blow over.
In these circumstances, the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee should summon Mr Ross, Mr Brand, the BBC Director General and all the other senior management involved. It's time they were all brought down a peg or two and shown that as recipients of the public's money, they must explain themselves to the public.
Preening and conceited Mr Ross might well be in his BBC comfort zone, but if he were to be summoned by the House of Commons to give evidence, I bet he'd crumble before our eyes.
UPDATE: Too little, much too late. Yesterday, Tim Davie was insisting that both Brand and Ross would be on air this week. Now at least the Director General has suspended them both. But it's clear that no one involved realised that this was as bad as it was, and that they are now scrambling to keep up with public opinion. They still don't get it. If it wasn't for today's papers, nothing would have happened.
The real offence is the BBC's for deciding that the programme was fit for broadcast. This is the BBC's offence, and it is those responsible in the BBC's management who need to be disciplined.
Piers Morgan seems to me to be spot on in his judgement:
Russell Brand...is almost an irrelevance in this.
He's just a sex-obsessed ex-junkie, a pre-Raphaelite version of Bernard Manning who will say literally anything to make a cheap tabloid headline, however lewd, crude or downright disgusting. I wouldn't expect anything else from him.
But Jonathan Ross is different. He is the highest-paid star in BBC history, their flagship hero, a man given £18million of taxpayers' money to amuse and entertain the nation on the airwaves. Dwell on that amount for a few seconds while you work out how to pay this week's food and petrol bills.
What you probably don't expect for all that hard-earned cash is that Ross will use it to abuse and insult a kind, gentle, well-loved, 78-year-old actor with gratuitous sexual sneers about his granddaughter.
The focus - and opprobrium - surely should now be directed at the BBC itself.
It is a useful maxim of life that mistakes happen; what counts is how they are dealt with. I checked into a hotel a while ago. When I flushed the toilet in my room, sewage spilled out. I was incandescent when I rang reception. But they sent someone up instantly who packed all my belongings and moved me to another room. There was nothing more they could have done, and so impressed was I by how they dealt with the mistake that I now recommend the hotel to people, rather than warning them away.
The reaction of the BBC to the mistake - whether it was Brand's, Ross's or that by whoever was producing and supervising them - has been deplorable. First, no reaction at all. It took until Monday - nine days after the broadcast - for the BBC even to bother apologising to Andrew Sachs. His grandaughter has yet to be offered anything. Then yesterday it began a slovenly, bureacratic attempt to push the problem away by handing it over to some pen pushing nonentity.
They really don't have a clue, do they? It is screamingly clear that the upper echelon of the BBC don't even begin to understand why so many people are so angry. Mark Thompson - a useless specimen at the best of times - is apparently on holiday, and this is suppsedly why he has yet to make any comment. Has he never heard of the phone? This is not some minor storm in a tea cup. The Prime Minister is involved, for goodness' sake. Thompson is clearly doing his level best to ensure that others take responsibility, while he swims along in calm waters, oblivious to any sense of honour or duty.
This episode goes to the very heart of what is wrong with the BBC - a self-appointed, luxuriously paid, back-scratching, public opinion-oblivious media elite which is interested only in pushing its own agenda on the rest of us, at our expense. When will be rid of this puffed up anachronism?
Yesterday I went in to a NatWest to pay in two cheques: one for £203.64 and one for £90. I filled out the paying-in slip and put the total down as £293.64. The cashier looked at my skip and informed that my maths was wrong: "That's £283.64, not £293.64". After a moment of stunned silence, I pointed out that I was right.: "If you add 90 to 200 you get 290".
This did not convince the cashier, who sneered at me: "Your cheques come to £283.64".
Eventually I got him to ask the cashier next to him, who giggled when she pointed out that I was right.
I think I might have experienced the banking industry's problems in microcosm.
David Cameron must know that he will have to dump Andy Coulson as his PR adviser if he is serious about gaining access to 10 Downing Street.
An interesting and arresting thesis, so I read on to find out why the man who is described by Mr Henry as having "done a terrific job in the last year" has to go.
Here's why:
When Coulson was named PR professional of the year the room filled with boos. When it was announced that he wasn't available to collect the award - he was understood to be busy with the fallout from the George Osborne crisis - there were further jeers. It suggests to me that the Tories don't actually realise how unpopular Coulson really is among his rivals. Sooner or later, that will matter.
Oh yes, I see. He suffers from a terrible, irredeemable handicap: other people in PR don't like him.
I think you're missing the point, matey. To most people that's surely a notch in his favour.
The journalist Chapman Pincher was described by EP Thompson (not someone I usually quote approvingly) as:
[A]kind of official urinal in which, side by side, high officials of MI5 and MI6, Sea Lords, Permanent Under-Secretaries, nuclear scientists,, Lord Wigg and others, stand patiently leaking in the public interest.
I'd adapt that phrase. Most journalists (admittedly not much more trusted by the public) view PR as the urinal into which companies piss. We try not to get splashed in the process.
Sounds to me like Andy Coulson is definitely the right man for the job.
