Watching both, if there was ever proof needed that Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language (as GB Shaw observed), this is provided in the very different political culture evidenced through comparing both and observing the rest of the presidential campaign.

Although the crowds attending the Republican convention – generally older and earnest looking young people, and the Democrat convention – on average younger with more evidence of blue collar workers, loosely mirror the make up of Conservative and Labour conferences, respectively, some of the content is very different.

Until last week, one of the major differences, apart from the sheer noise level, is the speech making role by the wives of the presidential candidates. Far be it from me to suggest that this is where the idea for Sarah Brown's appearance came from, but it further proves that nothing in politics is original.

However, just as Tory prospective candidates are no longer required to parade their wife or husband in front of selection meetings, why should the candidates' spouses or partners be a factor in the Presidential election?

At least Sarah Brown was very brief and to the point, it was not a saccharine fuelled encomium. Although very accomplished in its delivery, some of the content of Michelle Obama's speech was so sugary that you would have British audiences feeling nauseous, while the convention lapped it up.

Even less relevant, and more shameful, was the exploitation by both candidates of their children, bringing them all on to the platform. Can you imagine the reaction in this country if Brown or Cameron were to bring their offspring on stage at the end of the conference speeches? Even Tony Blair never did that.

Alastair Campbell once allegedly said when a reporter was asking a question about the influence on Blair of his religious beliefs that: "We don't do God". In America, if you don't do God you don't do politics, or at least the chances of doing it successfully are very small.

Polls have shown that being an atheist is about the most damaging admission a candidate could make. God has been invoked in speeches by both the candidates and other speakers at the conventions sometimes in a way that would make a British politician be told to stand at the pulpit rather than the podium.

Considering the US Presidency is arguably the most important job in the world, you might expect the highest standards to be demanded of those bidding to hold it. Instead, the presidential campaign has so far exposed flaws that are worrying to the rest of the world and appear to put our political contests in a better light.

For example, during the primary campaign, Hilary Clinton told an outright lie that she had landed in Sarajevo under gun fire. It is bad enough that she was happy to tell a lie but this is compounded by the huge error of judgment shown when she knew that the whole event was filmed and therefore the lie would be very easily and quickly exposed. If a British politician had been found to be so blatantly lying, it would have put an end to their political career. Yet in the United States, Clinton is still revered by many.

It is often questioned, sometimes by the incumbents, how many Presidents would survive the ordeal of Prime Minister's questions every week, but furthermore, how many candidates would survive the grilling that British political leaders are exposed to at the hands of interviewers like Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys? Again, can you imagine the spokesperson for a senior British politician saying that he or she would only make themselves available for interviews when the press show them respect and deference?

Yet that is exactly what Sarah Palin's spokesman said when she was criticised for not submitting herself to scrutiny by reporters. When she did agree to her first interview on ABC, the Wall Street Journal called the questioning tough. Tough? They must be joking. I have seen more incisive questioning from taxi drivers.

Mentioning, as Palin did in all seriousness, that the fact that you could see Russia from Alaska counted towards her experience of other countries was risible and would have been laughed out of court in Britain, but yet it went unchallenged by the interviewer.

She stated that her one trip outside the continent to US bases in Kuwait and Germany had changed her life but she was never asked in what way. In a land where people have a reputation for being pretty direct, it is surprising that American political questioning is anything but.

From this year's conventions and the campaign to date, it would appear that to run for President or Vice-President you have to be God-fearing, have an articulate partner and cute children, and no compunction about using them, you can lie and even if you are found out it doesn't matter and you may only have left the North American continent once in your life but you don't have to worry about your lack of experience to pronounce on foreign issues, or anything else for that matter, coming under too rigid scrutiny.

Above all though, you have to be able to attract millions and millions of dollars in support raising all sorts of issues about influence and reward, otherwise you are going nowhere.

It all makes our political system and values, for all its flaws, look positively wholesome.

Geoff Lawler was a Conservative MP for Bradford from 1983 to 1987. He now runs The Public Affairs Company, a Leeds-based firm of lobbyists.