The flag of the United States of America
'Arnold Schwarzenegger is of course the highest profile candidate - even my spell checker recognises his name!'

The answer, of course, is that these along with no less than 130 others are all candidates who have put themselves forward in the hopes of ousting California's Governor, Gray Davis, in the recall election.

I suppose one would expect nothing less from the tinselled home of the entertainment industry. I'd love to claim that this is the burning political question of the day over here, chewed over on every street corner - but many of my Californian friends tell me that they're just bored by and indifferent to the politics.

Of course, we've giggled like schoolgirls over the media circus (rarely has the word "circus" been used in such a context with so great a justification) surrounding the candidates. But can this soap opera election justly claim to be democracy in action? Does the invocation of an obscure section of California's State Constitution, making possible the recall of a Governor mid-term, inspire confidence in democratic process? What conclusions, some commentators over here have asked, might a fledgling democracy (say, Iraq) draw from California's example?

A Californian television network has been featuring the candidates in turn on successive evenings. I won't easily forget the two men (joint candidates) standing with the apparent sole intention of advertising a brand of beer that they're about to start producing. The campaign of porn merchant Larry Flynt ("vote for the smut peddler who cares") is equally hard to forget - and easy to dismiss.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is of course the highest profile candidate - even my spell checker recognises his name! Of course there is a precedent for a movie star breaking into top level politics - Ronald Reagan, who served two terms as Governor of California before making it to the White House.

But Mr Reagan had considerably more political experience before his election than does Mr Schwarzenegger. Arnie's sole claims to be taken seriously as a candidate seem to rest on his successfulness as a businessman, and the appointment of billionaire investor Warren Buffett as his senior financial advisor.

Sometimes I find it hard to avoid laughing - the stolid Austrian accent compared with the insistence of his references to "We the people of California" on the television commercials, and the proliferation of photos on his campaign website showing him standing proudly against the backdrop of the American flag.

Doesn't this show just a little too much desperation to be accepted? But Americans (like the British) idolise celebrity, and his on-screen macho image is bound to count in his favour with many - I have no doubts of his doing extremely well on October 7.

I reckon, however, that the question of whether or not the recall election is a good example of democracy in action is not actually the real issue here. It seems to me that this election - like some other high-profile elections of recent history that I might mention - is pointing out to us some of the limitations of democracy.

It's only too easy for an election to degenerate into a popularity contest - we humans are suckers for celebrity. The fact that almost anyone can stand leads inevitably to a large number of candidates unworthy of consideration.

We start to see the limitations of the mechanisms that are supposed to ensure a fair ballot. Short-term popular policies inevitably get precedence over long-term policies. And a bored and jaded electorate, who suffer from constant information overload, gravitate inevitably towards entertainment value and sensationalism. All these things I have observed in the UK - here in California (as you might expect) they are merely writ larger.

Of course democracy, like any other system of government, has its limitations - and its hard to see any serious alternative. But perhaps this election could be heard as a wake-up call - telling us that its time we took a long hard look at how we put democracy into practice?