Would we care?

On my flight over to Amsterdam last night, I sat next to a Dutch women who is a journalist for a Dutch weekly news maganize (the equivalent of Time or Newsweek in The Netherlands). She and 10 colleagues were returning from a week-long tour of the United States to write all about the presidential election. They saw George Bush speak in Ohio, were in D.C. to meet some Congressmen, interviewed Barrack Obama in Chicago - all so they could report about the election process in the U.S. to their Dutch readers.

Would a U.S. news magazine even report that The Netherlands was having an election, much less send a team of reporters to cover it? Obviously, the United States is over 10 times the size of The Netherlands and has a much larger role in world affairs. This is my fourth trip to The Netherlands this year and I have no idea who is the Prime Minister, yet every Dutch person I have spoken to about the election clearly knows who Bush and Kerry are.