Polly Gillespie: Jack Tame, it's time to pay up

I didn't speak to another doctor about my terrors for years, because I knew it was simply my imagination. Photo / Supplied

I think Jack Tame will have to pry open his wallet. Not implying he's tight, but it's a hell of a bet to lose.

Yes, I think Jack Tame will have to open his wallet and haul out a hundy for me come American Election Day. A year ago I foolishly predicted that Donald Trump would be president of the United States.

"No way! Never!" said Jack.

Oh Jack, I think I'll take that in American dollars, thanks.

"He likes to be called Mr Trump," said Jane, my guest co-ordinaries, when she informed me she'd arranged an interview with the man himself.

"I'm not calling him Mr Trump, Jane," I replied indignantly.

I think I may have called him Mr Trump.

I've interviewed Donald Trump twice and both times he was easy and affable. Easy because you ask him a question and you get a five minute reply full of scrumptious sound bites.

Affable? Yes. He likes New Zealanders. Likes New Zealand golfers and New Zealand golf courses. And he's actually good humoured, or "good 'umoured" as he'd say it.

The other likeable thing is that he doesn't talk like any kind of politician I've ever met before. He's minus the sing-song political rhetoric. It's for the same reason New Zealanders fell in love with John key that Americans are falling in love with Donald Trump.

He doesn't talk like a wind up doll politician. He doesn't sound like a protestant minister delivering your great uncle's eulogy. You know what I mean: That forced, overly familiar, fake enthusiasm.

Donald Trump is an enigma. He's a strangely tanned, oddly coiffed weirdo. Not all of what he says makes sense or is in any way culturally sensitive. He's offended everyone from female TV presenters to the pope and still his popularity is stellar. How is it even possible to insult "Frank the Pope"? Who would want to piss off Frank? The guy is universally adored. So Trump offends him, and yet the pollsters tell us Trump's getting more and more support.

Bernie Sanders is a true American socialist and a good man. He's been on the right side of history since he was 14 and even at that age he was solidly protesting for equal rights. He's also not a shiny suited slick American politician. Bernie is a 74-year-old Jew married to a catholic. Bernie could change the world given a chance. I know America. I don't think they'll have the balls to do it.

The irony is both men, on opposite sides of the economy, have a common goal. One a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist and one a placard carrying socialist, both believe in bringing jobs back to America. Both men say "screw outsourcing and manufacturing cheaply in third world countries. Bring the jobs back to America."

Interesting.

If Trump wins then the world ironically becomes a far less comic version of the Seth MacFarlane classic Team America: World Police (hopefully with less vomiting and gratuitous puppet sex).

If Sanders wins then America does something it never does. It picks the old guy without the Kennedy good looks and prep school education. But either way, jobs will return to America. You could argue that, comedy aside, (Donald Trump? Really?) the American people will benefit.

If Hillary Clinton wins? It's more of the same aimless idealism and if Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz (very popular in the bible belt) win then it's congratulations conservative christian middle America.

If Trump wins Jack Tame owes me money and we can look forward to the "Axis of Idiocy": Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin and The Donald. If the remarkably under-rated under-dog Bernie Sanders wins then America is a far greater country than I ever imagined it could be.

Either way, Americans will get jobs and you have to politely applaud that.

- nzherald.co.nz