The Daily Novel

Mitt Romney had to win in Michigan, where his father is a former Governor, to stay in the race. He not only won but won convincingly. He took 39 per cent in the Republican contest, with John McCain winning only 30 per cent and Mike Huckabee trailing with 15 per cent.

So the current state of play is that each of these three has won an emphatic victory in one of the the three states already declared. Huckabee in Iowa, McCain in New Hampshire and now Romney in Michigan the biggest state of the three including some very big cities.

The race is clearly wide open. One interesting footnote. McCain did much less well than expected amongst independent voters without a Republican party card. Which prompts me to assert that my blog yesterday on Michael Bloomberg was worth doing. The Republican waters will be muddied still further if ex-Mayor of New York, Rudy Guliani, does well in Florida.

If there is still no clear Republican winner by early March it is entirely possible that the present mayor of New York will throw his hat in the ring and back it with a spend which could break all the records in the history books. The precedents are no help in judging whether this is possible but no previous candidate  is anything like as rich as Bloomberg. The richest I can remember is Nelson Rockefeller. But his fortune was measured in millions, not billions, and most of it he inherited it from his father.

Bloomberg is a self-made man. And his record in New York indicates that he is capable of making the transition from business to politics and government. Definitely too soon to write him off.

Travelling down to Dorset today I bought The Independent, on the basis of its front page lead, quite different from the rest of the newspapers. The headline was: ‘Enough of this educational apartheid’. It was, so the sub-head told me, ‘a devastating attack on our two-tier education system.’

It was written, not by one of The Independent journalists, but by the headmaster of Wellington College, which I know as one of the minor British public (i. e. private or ‘independent’) schools, Wellington College, one Dr Anthony Seldon.

As a working class lad educated quite effectively at the Wolverhampton Municipal Grammar School, I smarted in my young adult life, from all those minor public school boys who made fun about my many social gaffe’s and my dreadful Wolverhampton accent, which has none of the atrractions of the almost lyrical Scottish, Irish or even Yorkshire accents. It is plain ugly.

So now, in 2008, I have the master of Wellington College speaking up for people of my ilk. But what is his solution. He does not want me to suffer the embarrassment of going to Wellington College and getting mocked for my accent and my relatively inadequate educational background. He wants me to feel comfortable and still get the benefits of a public school education. So his solution to ‘educational apartheid’ is for Wellington College being allowed to start one of the these new-fangled Academy Schools, which as a result of the Blairite vision of new Labour, are now part of the system. Instead of teaching by teachers we have academies run by the rich of all persusions, who are allowed to educate the nation’s youth. So there is one that is sponsored by David Beckham, and is going to make football a priority.

For me that smacks of the worst of American capitalism, i. e. football scholarships. And the worst of Soviet communism. Concerned to rear athletes to win gold medals, rather than education of the whole person.

The name Seldon was familiar. So I went into Wikipedia, and discovered that Anthony is the son of Arthur Seldon, who with Ralph Harris, founded the Institute of Economic Affairs, devoted to the free market and the philosphy of Hayek. I knew both of them quite well in the early 1960’s, when they were using their think tank to preach the gospel of the free market. I liked both of them, because although I disagreed with their thinking, I admired the zest with which they espoused it.

And of course in those days we never thought that the world would revert to nineteenth century ideas about how national economies should be run. But of course the world did. And Margaret Thatcher came to power on the ideas of their think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, although Wikipedia does not tell you.

And as a result we now live in a world where the City men and the bosses of public companies earn one hundred times the salary, which long educated and hard working members of the middle classes can hope to achieve. Seldon’s dad and Ralph Harris, would not have been happy with this outcome. They certainly did not want such inequalities. And in a truly free market, of course, it should not happen, because the men who are pulling down such huge salaries, are doing so because they have managed to grab the reins of power and to pay themselves vast salaries, even when they fail.

Young Arthur Seldon rebelled against his father in writing a mostly laudatory biography of one Tony Blair, the architect of New Labour, who, as readers of this blog will know, has just accepted the golden sovereign from the arch-capitalists, J. P. Morgan.

Today’s Independent also has a four page article reporting how during his premiership Blair took mass, with his wife and children, administered in Downing Street, by one of the assistants of the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, who had a reputation for winning celebrity converts (including Anne Widdecombe).

This should be the stuff of a BBC comedy show, if it were not happening to our leaders. And Blair, although he has accepted the Morgan sovereign, apparently wants to be President of Europe. Whereas for people like me he has never understood that Europe is not, like the UK has been mostly, America’s reliable ally, but an independent voice in the world. Not anti-American.But not slavishly following everything that emerges from  American power.

Blair still has his followers. Here is a link to their web site, which I discovered when one of them posted a comment on my blog.

While I was driiving down to Dorset today, listening to Miles Davis, the stock markets were crashing. Since my first job was as a journalist following the stock markets I have learnt to distrust stock market movements, which too often reflect mass euphoria or its opposite. But I am with Gordon Brown in thinking that what we are facing this year in Britain and the US is a pretty serious recession.

Bloomberg might well look like a more credible saviour of the US economy than any of the Republicans or Clinton or Obama. It will also raise the question of whether the US is ready to elect a Jew as President. And it will also raise interesting questions as to whether Bloomberg, even though a Jew, will be as slavish a protagonist for the Israeli fight with the Palistians as Bush who could not be more WASP.

If it happens it will be well underway before Americans vote for the next President next November. If it does happen the Presidential election is wide open. Tonight’s news focuses on who is going to pick up the Republican nomination, McCain, Romney or Huckabee. But if the economy becomes the issue, none of these candidates seems credible.

Waiting in the wings is the present mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, a Democrat for most of his life, but who switched to the Republican Party and won New York, which has many Democratic voters, mainly because he was not a standard Republican, but very much his own man, like many previous New York mayors, including Lindsey in my time.

Bloomberg has repeatedly said that he is not a candidate for President. But people close to him continually leak stories to the media that he may enter the race at a late stage. Which is entirely possible because his fortune, based on providing financial information services which compete effectively with Reuters, who started with carrier pigeons while Napoleon was still alive, is quite big enough, to finance a Presidential compaign.

The leaks say that if he does run he will stand as an independent. American history is littered with dashed hopes of independents who have tried and failed. The most recent is Ralph Nader, who stood on a platform of bashing that historic component of American consumer capitalism, Ralph Nader. Nader’s message, which was essentially that American motor manufacturers did not pay sufficient attention to making cars safe, for the drivers and for the pedestrians who were knocked over by them.

That message was too radical for his time. But the Nader message has been heard, and today tho motor industry sells on the quality of its air bags as much as on the top speed the vehicle is capable of.

Bloomberg is not a Ralph Nader. Although formerly a Democrat he is a man of the right, and has no difficulty in delivering the gospel of American consumer capitalism. But he is a complex character and a highly successful international businessman. Initially he supported the Iraq war but more recently has expressed doubts.

Bloomberg is also the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. Which does not do him any harm in New York, which has a very strong and articulate Jewish minority. But a Jewish President? That would really change the political landscape in the US. How would that play with the right wing Christian fundamentalists?

At present this is only a remote possibility. But it means that this blogger will not be bowled over by what happens in the forthcoming Michigan and South Caroline primaries. The American election does not take place until next November. And lots of things may happen before then which will make nonsense of much of what will be written by the pundits over the next few weeks, up to and including the super doopy primaries in February.

News at Ten is back, steeped in nostaligia. The usual diet including rich offerings from the current murders, including a report on the first day of the trial of the Suffolk murderer, although nothing happened. And more stale bread from the Princess Di iinquest in which the butler was desparately trying to find something new to say, which he hadn’t used already in his books and television appearances.

All presided over by the avuncular figure of Trevor Macdonald, reassuring us that even in this age of terror all coloured people are not suicide bombers.

Nostalgia is, of course, big business in the digital television age. All those cheap repeats of the sitcoms and comedy shows of a bygone era.

And I got a whiff of it in Colchester High Street over the weekend where I bought a couple of shirts. This morning I put one of them on. It requires cuff links! (Happily I still possess a pair which I wear with my dinner jacket. )

But cuff links went out with my father’s generation. In those days men not only had to hunt for their cuff links, when they changed their shirt. They had to find the collar stud which was necessary to attach the separate collar (often starched) to the shirt (nearly always white). Tommy Handley, the Ricky Gervaise of his age, famously died of a heart attack when down on his hands and knees looking for his collar stud beneach the furniture.

At least we have not yet got back to that. And at least we have not gone back to the days when men could wear a shirt of any colour so long as it was white.

Peter Preston, former editor of The Guardian and now a columnmist, asked the question in a weekend blog, ‘Why did we get wrong about Hillary?’ It was the right question but if you read the article you will not find any satisfactory answers. Since I was one of the few who did not write Hillary off after the Iowa vote, and did not write Obama off after the New Hampshire vote I will make a first stab at answering the question posed by Preston.

 Preston makes the important point that the press covering the campaign, travelling on the same bus, and mixing daily with the spinners of the candidates, got swept along with the feelings being expressed. Iowa was a shock for the Clinton camp and their despair was communicated to the press corps. Likewise, after New Hampshire, the media communicated the opposite view. So nearly everyone pronounced that it was an open race between Clinton and Obama.

That’s the Democratic race. But after New Hampshire the media went bingo for McCain as the Republican leader, with no-one apart from me saying that acutally his age might be a substantial deterrent. My own view is that the Republican race is entirely open. Huckabee and McCain and Romney cannot yet be written off. Neither can the Mayor of New York who is entering the race in the Florida primary. And on the sidelines there is the hugely wealthy Blomberg who still might run as an independent with Republican sympathies.

Preston also makes the point that the British newspapers both broadsheet and tabloid are carrying far more than is usual on the US election. Partly because the online versions of The Times The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, have garnered many readers in the US. So they all have many people covering the election. As for the BBC, although they are supposed to be cutting back, they appear to have sent at least 150 reporters out to cover it!!!

This frenetic activity is not as idiotic as it seems. This American election is certainly the most important in my lifetime. America is the dominant world power. And although in economic terms China is catching up fast, America is beyond question the only world power whach has the military  might to blast those who disagree with it’s policies into eternity.

This US election is vital, because it will decide whether the US continues to be governed by someone like George Bush, who despite his wafer thin majority, has followed his own minority view, and launched a war which is not only hated by many other countries, but is profoundly dislked by, currerntly, more than 60 per cent of Americans.

So why are the journalists getting it wrong?

My preliminary answer is that the most important fact is the pressures on reporters and their editors. Reporters on the spot are asked to report for several groups. The BBC lot have to service BBC News 24 as well as all the domestic channels. The newspaper lot have to write for the print edition and for the web. And they are also asked to do video broadcasts, although many of them have only recently learned the techniques of talking their copy rather than writing it.

All this takes away from their time for reflection. To give a considered analysis of what is happening in the area of the world they are reporting on.

 This is the first US election since the web has really taken off. The mainstream news media are still dominant, despite the millions of bloggers like me. But even those who buy the newspapers are reading it first on the web.

This is a totally different situation to that holding when the last US election was fought only four years ago. And it makes it very difficult for the viewer to decide what is fact and what is opinion.

The Washington Post reports today on a new poll which shows Obama up 14 points. But the key thing is that it shows that Clinton is still supported by 42 per cent of Democratic  voters, campared with only 37 per cent for Obama.

In other words, contrary to what we have all been reading, Clinton is still very much the front runner amongst American Democratic voters.

Tomorrow, South Carolina votes in the primaries, which result will also have massive coverage. Since I have been there, and have friends there, i know that it has many influences that are not shared by other states. So beware any predictions based on what the voters decide there.

And beware any news organistion which trumpets too loud on what it means for the national result.

There are many battles still ahead. But I totally applaud the volume of the coverage of the US elections in the British press. It is far more important, than whether Hain should resign because of his admitted incompetance in relation to his election returns. Or whether Gordon Brown is going to survive his blunders.

Who is the next US President is actually more important to our well-being than who is the next British Prime Minister. Young people know this. More than those of my generation.

But that does not mean that it is not important who is the next UK Prime Minister.

But, and her my view is clear, we want someone who is alive to the realities of Britain’s place in the world. But someone who is not the lackey of US policy and american consumer capitalism, which is what both Blair and Brown are guilty of.

Keir Hardie, and the other founding fathers of the British Labour Party, must be turning in their graves. Tony Blair is joining the leading American bank, J P Morgan, as an adviser for a million dollars a year. For many Socialists that is far worse than coming out of the closet and kneeling down before the Pope. Notsomuch taking the capitalist shilling as selling out to the enemies of the workers, whose cause the Labour Party was founded to support.

Younger readers may need reminding that John Pierrepoint Morgan was the most powerful of all the robber barons of the nineteenth century. They not only ‘fired’ workers who dared to be trade unionists, they literally shot them on the picket lines.

But perhaps, at last, Tony Blair, like Hillary Clinton, is finding his true voice. Notsomuch New Labour as New Conservative. The only honourable course left for him is to turn in his Labour Party card and apply to join the Conservatives.

But, come to think of it, he might be too right wing for David Cameron.

Hillary Clinton seems to have taken on board the point that I, and other commenators made about allowing her vulnerability to show through. She herself attributes her success in New Hampshire to the crying scene. Clearly it was a factor, as indicated by the overwhelming support she got from the women of New Hampshire. But not the only factor. She was also favoured by the high age profile of the voters. She has been as successful with the aged as has Obama with youth.

The vote gave her 39 per cent against 36 per cent for Obama, with the most radical Democratic candidate,  John Edwards, a long way behind. New Hampshire still does not warm to anything that seems like socialism. The result also made me wonder just why so few older voters have nailed their colours to the Obama mast. Could it be that that there is a lot more conscious or unconscious raciism amongst older Americans.

The Democratic race now looks like a two-horse race, which either of the two might win. It will clearly be a tough battle and therefore not easy for Hillary develop her softer feminine qualities when she has to do battle on the hustings and on the television screens.

The other winner in New Hampshire, John McCain, is admired for combining his tough war hero side with a stern ethical stance, which makes the political machines seem shabby. He also has a sense of humour and dealt with the age issue well by saying he was too old to be a comeback kid. Nevertheless I persist in thinking that the reality of  a 71-75-year-old President is going to put off some voters.

But all of the Republican candidates have substantial negatives. Huckabee is too much the born-again Christian even for the majority of Republicans. Particularly when Americans have had years of George Bush’s friends with their mission to save the world from scientists who think creationism is a myth and from Muslims, whe think that American consumer capitalism is immoral. George Romney, a highly experienced Governor, has floundered in the campaign on a number of issues, including the religious one, by trying to catch the evangelical vote by stressing the similarity between the Mormons and the mainstream Christian religions. Although Romney does not have four wives, he does suffer from the fact that the religion he follows is widely regarded as a cult. Finally, there is Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York, who won a national and international reputation for the way he rallied tho city after the appalling events of 9/11. But he has had at least three wives and makes regular appearances in the gossip columns. And as the French Prime Minister is discovering, too much emphasis on your love life does not go down too well with the electorate who wonder if you have enough time left over to run the country.

Giuliani is not even entering the campaign until the Florida primary, but if he wins that he may be in a position to challenge McCain.

……..I want to get off.Although we did not leave Dorset until 1.30 PM it should have been a doddle getting to the Andrew Marr lecture last night at Queen Mary Westfield by 6.30 PM. But I underestimated the depths of incompetence I can rise to.

When we reached our Gospel Oak flat Janet said we should start out immediately so she would not stop to change.‘Plenty of time’, I said, ‘I know the route like the back of my hand. Besides I am going to change myself.’ So I fished out my charcoal grey suit and put on my wedding and funeral shoes. And went downstairs to get the rest of the luggage from the car with studied calm. Janet was getting more and more agitated, urging me to hurry.

When we hit our first traffic jam in Kentish Town Road she even suggested turning back and going out to dinner instead.‘We still have ample time’, I insisted, voicing my superior knowledge, ‘this lecture usually starts ten minutes late.’ I turned on the 6 o-clock news to discover what was happening in New Hampshire but the BBC only wanted to tell me about Gordon Brown’s first 2008 press conference. We reached the Angel without further mishap and I directed her to take the turning off City Road to pick up my favourite route through the back streets which avoids rush-hour traffic.

I did not become seriously concerned until I noticed a sign post telling me we were heading towards Highbury! I turned on Sat Nav but that made it worse. I kept pressing the wrong buttons and changing the screen and lost all sense of where we were. We might have ended up in Dover had it not been for a friendly motor cyclist who knocked on the window and said, ‘You look lost, where do you want to go?’ We told him the Mile End Road and he said no problem, just follow me.We waved him goodbye at Stepney Green. It was 7.15 PM when we reached QMW but I had recovered my cool. ‘We’ll go to the pub, have a drink and wander over in time for the party.’

We went in through the main entrance in what I thought was plenty of time, then turned a corner, and literally bumped into Professor Peter Hennessy and Andy Marr leading some hundreds of people to the drinks.I immediately apologized for being late and told Andrew that I would get the transcript and blog in due course.

That was my final mistake. Had I not confessed I could have used my rat-like cunning and done a half way decent blog by finding out from the students and teachers what Andy had said.

However, the evening ended well. When we got back to Gospel Oak we went out to eat at one of our favourite restaurants. The manager was just closing up, but he said no problem. I had the baked mushrooms and the halibut. Janet had the mussels and the sirloin steak. I could have written a restaurant review, except that I find writing and reading about food boring.

Tomorrow, if I manage to get out of bed without falling and breaking a leg, I shall return to matters Presidential on the other side of the pond. According to Newsnight Barack Obama is going to win again for the Democrats and John McCain is going to beat Huckabee to first place on the Republican side. But they are only guessing. They went on air two hours before the polls closed in New Hampshire and exit poll estimates are frequently wrong.

As I write this the voters in New Hampshire are still in their beds but when they get up they will be voting in the second primary in this very exciting Presidential race. And the likelihood is that it will be a record turnout. Most of the media commentators I have read are suggesting that John McCain is best placed to win the Republican vote.

What is interesting is that I have not come across any commentator who has suggested that his age may disbar him, if not today then very soon. There has been a huge amount of discussion, on both sides of the pond, as to whether America is ready to elect the first black President or the first female President. But nothing that I have seen about whether America in 2008 will vote for man who is now 71 and would be 75 when his term ends.

Partly this results from the way that journalism is done. You cannot sum up the age arugumant  without some qualification. McCann would not be the first US President to be elected after reaching the usual retirement age of 65. Dwight Eisenhower won a second term at the age of 66. But he was not only a war hero but his first term as President was rated successful and he was hugely popular, winning one of the most resounding victories in hiistory when he stood for re-election. But the historians will remember that his second term was not distinguished. By the time I arrived to live in America in 1959 he was spending much of his time playing golf with his old cronies. Americans in their forties (including his own Vice President, Richard Nixon) were dismayed as to how out of touch he was with the younger generation.

And that was in 1959. The norms about age are now vastly different. The men Eisenhower used to play golf with included the bosses of many of America’s biggest corporations, who were his contemporaries. Today many managers retire at 50 and there are many chief executives in their thirties and forties.

I write this blog with very mixed feelings. Because I am even older than McCain by two years. But in the hard reality of modern politics age does matter. On this side of the pond Menzies Campbell was thought to be too old to lead the Liberal Democats, although he would not have had to shoulder the burden of the premiership. His best hope was to be the chief negotiator in Britain’s next Parliament, where neither Labour nor Conservatives are likely to get an absolute majority. The Liberal Democrats went on to choose their present leader from a field of two, who were remarkably similar in background and policies. They chose the man in his mid forties, Nick Clegg, rather than the man in his early fifties, Chris Huhne.

I wanted to vote for the man who took over the acting leadership, Vince Cable, who gave outstanding performances in the House of Commons, blending cogent analysis with wit and humour. But he is 71 and was thought much too old to be a candidate for the leadership.

So I shall be very surprised if McCain becomes the Republican candidate and astounded if he goes on to win the election in 2008.

‘Hail the new JFK’ was the London Sunday Times headline yesterday when commenting on Barack Obama’s resounding victory in the Iowa primary. Some Americans are thinking along the same lines. A valid question as anyone who watched the screaming voices of American youth which greeted his victory speech. Both of them struck a chord with the nation’s youth. Moreover both of them appealed to youthful idealism. It should be a reminder to all foreign commentators that beneath the greediness of American capialism and the neo-imperialism of George W. Bush and his friends, the kind of spirit which infused the founding fathers when they embarked on the Mayflower to found a better country, where they could be free to follow their own beliefs, and where decisions were made by the people rather than by a monarch.

There are also many contrasts between the two men. But before discussing these it is worth reflecting about the enthusiasm of the Sunday Times and of the London Times for this young black who few Americans and even fewer Brits had even heard of a year or two ago.

Now even that old Thunderer the London Times is not going to have any influence how people vote in the American election. But the London Times is of course the voice of Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the ultra Conservative Fox television channel and now the ultra Conservative Wall Street Journal, which is a powerful influence in America’s business community. Both of these news organisations are the natural supporters of American’s Republican Party

But Murdoch, although he is a businessman first and foremost and nothing if not right wing, has a long record of supporting the left of centre party when it suits him. Long before he became a force on the British media scene his Australian papers gave strong support for Australia’s Labour Party. And, of course, much to the dismay of British conservatives, he gave his enthusiastic support to Tony Blair’s New Labour.

It is of course early days in the American election which does not take place until next November. And it is by no means certain that Obama will be the Democratic candidate let alone the next President. But it is not at all fanciful to thnk that Murdoch may be thinking of lending him his support. The London Times also campares Obama with President Reagan, who was of course Margaret Thatcher’s bosom pal in a world that is vastly different from the world in which we live now.

The case for Obama being the new Reagan is not totally absurd. Alongside his campaign call for change, Obama has been stressing time and time again, his wish to unify America, and to use in his administration talented figures outside the Democratic Party. So like Reagan he was a unifier, but on all other counts he is totally unlike Reagan. It would be much more accurate to call him America’s Tony Blair.

But to return to the similarities and differences between Obama and JFK. Like Jack Kennedy, Barack Obama is a young Senator, relatively inexperienced in administration, compared with the Governors amongst the Presidential aspirants, and relatively unknown on the national scene. Also like Kennedy his is totally at home with the east coast elite. Kennedy because he was born into it. Obama because he has spent most of his working life at the Harvard Law School, and you can’t get more elite than that in America.

But now for the contrasts. Barack comes from a poor neighbourhood in Chicago. Jack Kennedy was born with a golden spoon in his mouth. His father made most of his money in the years of Prohibition and with some help from the Mafia who of course dominated the booze business in those far-off times when America had made drinking a crime with zeal which matches that of today’s Taliban. But by the time the young JFK was growing up, his father had become the ambassador to the UK, which gave him a entree into the international elite, because, of course, those were the years when the Anglo-American alliance had to be nurtured to defeat Nazism.

Unlike Obama Kennedy’s political ambitions were nurtured by both his parents. By his father because that would help his business and help him increase his translation from the bootleg trade to legitimate business. But above all by his mother, Rose,  who was hugely ambitious for her son. Obama’s mother died when he was aged 10 and his father, by all accounts, was  fairly inadequate. Obama’s ambition, and he is without doubt ambitious and has the self-belief to go with it, is very much his own man.

Kennedy was first and foremost a man of action rather than a scholar.  But he had many friends amongst the academic elite at Harvard. And quite unlike Obama had many friends in the media, notably Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post.

Obama, although he clearly has the same capacity as Kennedy to sway an audience, he has not yet shown, in my view, the kind of eloquence that fuelled the cry, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ But, it is early days yet, and we must remember that many of Kennedy’s best lines were coined by his speech writers.

If Obama is elected he will be the first black US President. Kennedy was of course at the heart of the WASP establishment. But WASP stands for White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Kennedy of course was a Catholic. And in 1959 there were many who thought that America would never elect a Roman Catholic who owed his allegience to a foreign Pope. Previously the only serious Roman Catholic contender for the White House, Al Smith, had lost for that very reason.

The one thing that is reasonably certain from poll in Iowa,  where you have to drive for miles if you want to see a black face, is that being black is no longer a bar to becoming President.

The other thing that counts in an American election is religion. Whether a declared atheist could become President in America 2008 is a question that is unlikely to be tested. As is the question of whether that born again Christian, Rupert Murdoch, would ever support a supporter of Richard Dawkins.

Obama has already let it be known that yesterday he was in church praying for the victims of the Kenyan massacres. Not only that, according to the reports I have read, he is a devout Christian. But he is clearly not a creationist.

It is still early days. And it is too soon to write off Hillary Clinton. There is nothing to suggest that America would not vote for a woman. Indeed there is a case for thinking that part of Hillary’s problem is that she too often behaves like men are expected to behave. There was a moment yesterday when the audience really warmed to her, when she admitted that she had been hurt by the Iowa defeat. She smiled, and exposed her quite femine vulnerability. Which she rarely does, after all the practice she has had in succeeding in the still largely male dominated fields of the law and politics.

She might do better if shows more of that side of her personality in the battles ahead.