“(Alexis) de Tocqueville said, ‘Democracy is a great system, but it will only work if the population is smart and educated’. In the United States, the public education system is in really poor shape. You can look at that as a reason for the tone of those debates… or so-called whatever they are. We’ll call them debates - that’s what they call them.”

“I don't think that George W. Bush is a complete idiot. I think he’s pretty canny. I think he’s pretty wily, and he’s going to win again. Now part of that is coming up with this character – this persona – (imitating Bush) ‘you know, I don’t use big words, I just talk simple’. He knows his constituency and so the messages have deliberately been made simple.”

Gross supports his chin with his closed fist.

“It’s a deliberate dumbing down of their intellectual abilities.”

While Gross confesses to thinking that Democrat John Kerry is not a great candidate, he won’t buy into the Republican’s ‘flip-flop’ attack either.

“I find the painting of Kerry as being some sort of weak flip-floppy useless guy idiotic. You may have one set of beliefs, and if they’re challenged by a better argument, and you doggedly stick to those stupid set of beliefs then you’re a fool… and you’re an ideologue.”

As the word ‘ideologue’ escapes his lips, Gross almost appears ready to jump to that topic. He holds off. It refers directly to the Prime Minster he plays in H2O.

“What democracy is actually designed to do is to hear other arguments and say, “you know, you guys over in the Green Party are right about that, and we really should try and implement it”. And oddly in our three party system that happened a fair bit with the natural ruling party snipping the best parts of the other guys platforms. So in a sort of back door way, the whole population is represented by the natural ruling party.”

The topic of ‘hearing arguments’ lands on American filmmaker Michael Moore. The two had met before at the Cannes Film Festival.

“Because of Fahrenheit 911’s absolutely enormous success, people started taking him apart as if he were an intellectual. He’s not. He’s an emotional filmmaker who puts images together to get people riled up about something and maybe go and study it a little harder. I think his service to the general debate in the election in the US is invaluable. But it’s not to be taken as a thesis, or a paper analyzing the movements of the Bush Administration.”

“I love that fact that the US media has been characterized as being lefty and anti-Bush, when I don’t see how he could have had an easier ride from the moment that he went into Iraq until very recently. Nobody was questioning if this was a good idea or not. And Moore’s got a lot of young people engaged, so if even 10% of them go out and do something, that’s an accomplishment.”