A FORMER senior White House speechwriter travelled to Ealing’s University of West London to talk to over 200 guests about the contentious US presidential race that’s making history.

The talk by Ambassador Carolyn Curiel titled Democracy Unplugged: The 2016 road to the White House was the first of UWL’s Public Lecture series of the academic year and also covered polls on voter confidence.

Guests, which included UWL’s students and staff, members of the public as well as Ealing’s Madam Mayor Dr Patricia Walker and Mayor Consort Lawrence Walker, were captivated by the unique perspective presented by the Ambassador; drawn from her vast experience in public service, journalism and academia.

Currently a Clinical Professor of Communications at the prestigious Purdue Institute in Indiana, USA, the Ambassador has previously served as a Senior White House Speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and as the Ambassador to Belize.

Her career in journalism includes working for ABC News and Washington Post as well as a member of the Editorial Board of The New York Times where she was called the ‘most powerful person in New York politics’.

During the evening, Ambassador Curiel shared with the audience what separated this election from those in the past by analysing the role of the news media in this scandal driven race for the White House and its finances. 

She said: “This has been the longest, most expensive, most divisive, most embarrassing, most confounding presidential race in our history.”

The Ambassador also talked of the increasing use of Twitter in this election which has been utilised by Republic nominee Donald Trump more than anyone else in politics.

According to data obtained from Twitter this month, Mr Trump has tweeted 33,400 times compared to President Barack Obama’s 15,300 tweets and Democratic nominee Hilary Clinton’s 8,607 tweets.

Ambassador Curiel also talked about her students’ work as part of the Purdue Institute for Civic Communications (PICC), of which she is both founder and Executive Director of.

PICC students create and analyse national polls on voters’ civic confidence on election issues and, last month, conducted a poll that showed what Americans know and believe in about the state of their nation.

Headline poll results shared was that 2% of voters will seek counselling if their candidate loses and that 83% of Americans think that the quality of news coverage about the campaign has been of low quality.

UWL’s Vice Chancellor Professor Peter John said: ‘It was a delight to host the Ambassador who shared a truly unique perspective on the topical election.

"It was also a delight to hear that, as a Founder of PICC, the Ambassador shares our goals as a Career University by using experimental learning to prepare young people for jobs, whether it is in public service or other fields of communications."