Thoughts on the American elections

There has been a lot made of todays election in the United States. The front page of one of todays papers called it an election which would determine the course of human history. I suppose that's true as far as it goes*, but you know, it's not really that big a deal. You see, whoever wins the election today, very little will actually change.
Both Bush and Kerry will face the same requirements in their term; the US is heavily overstretched in its military commitments overseas and will need to build bridges with former close allies in order to reduce those commitments through third party help. Kerry would probably find that job easier, but either of them will have to do it. The USA budget defecit requires that it must happen, and they'd both have that to contend with too, so foreign policy for either of a period of rapproachment and friendliness with their closer allies is effectively mandated. There won't be any new wars in the second term due to those selfsame military commitments, although both will continue to talk big about the need to pursue terrorists in order to placate the ravening imbeciles of the midwest.
Domestic policy faces a related big problem - a huge budget defecit - and both candiates would have to face that. Tax raises are inevitable in the next term, as are federal budget cuts. The economy can't support the aggressive foreign policy and so that's another reason for a lack of wars any time soon. Kim Jong-il can sleep easy upon his pile of corpses and atom bombs because Uncle Sam just can't afford to do anything about him shy of assassination.
The were be differences in detail, naturally; how the federal budget is cut will be a matter for debate, and so too will be how to woo back old allies like the French and Germans. Both candidates will have to suck up to the Turks big time and push the EU to get them on board in order to demonstrate that they're not anti-muslim and the West likes unaccountable third world states with poor human rights records just as much as anyone so long as they're friendly-ish to us.
Realistically, whoever America votes for today, nothing much is going to change. Certainly your average citizen of Big bean, Illonois or Basra won't notice any difference to their lives. The only thing that might change is that if Kerry wins then the rest of the world might laugh at the US a little less, and we know how that's going to play. If your average midwesterner knows he'll be mocked less by the French for voting Kerry, he'll vote for Bush just to spite those dandy Euro-intellectuals.
So that's my prediction. Bush to win by a nose.
Not to worry. It won't make any difference.

^{*Pretty much everything will change the course of human history, one way or another.}