Counting Open Palms

Just wondering what happens if despite it all Mugabe still loses the runoff. Might may well be right when you are a shameless dictator, but he was beaten once already. I'm not saying it's the likeliest outcome, but let's keep an eye on what the troubled Zimbabwean voters say. It would have been a whole lot easier to just fake a result last time round without bothering with the crass coverup which ensued. Something's still independent in that state; if embattled.

Let's just say I don't expect a 2003 style 100.0% YES for Saddam, while the dust-clouds of invasion grew.

Yesterday's News

As everyone, everywhere, including those who actively do not care, know: Obama won the nomination last night.

Congratulations.

Hillary's not giving up though. It's just as I predicted with an hour still to go on Twitter:

Tonight's Hillary prediction: she still won't quit. She doesn't know how. It's going to take a Brutus.

Brutus? Bill? We’ll see. The shouts of “Denver! Denver! Denver!” were audible during her non-concession speech last night, before a too-homely-for-Obama crowd of defiantly hysterical supporters. I doubt there’d be much of a travelling party left with her come Denver in distant August, after a summer of full campaigning for the big boys and the oblivion the media will gift her once this week is done. Oh sure: it’s in some interests to keep her ghost around, haunting the golden one. But even while objectivity, verifiability, honesty and sanity are all out of vogue as ever among the press; a higher rule still stands that yesterday’s news is yesterday’s news. Americans hate losers. I think even though she has dark plans to steal whatever she can get – for concession is very likely death to part of her group’s collective mind – it will quickly cease to matter. Just as counting the last vote is always forgotten weeks after the event is done in American politics, she will be tarred with that very worst thing: passé.

There won't even be coverage of what happens once she again fails to offer Obama her concession this week. Just a little stir at the farce which will be her lot at the convention, smaller than it is now, especially among the supers. They have careers to protect.

John Edwards' strategy isn't looking too bad right now. Strange that early failure is sometimes better than lengthy closeness to success.

Out of the Archive

Happened into this old prediction while searching for something else in my diaries. It's from Tuesday, 31st May 2005:

As for politics, there’s been a big story. The French referendum on the EU constitution came out a pretty clear “non”. Already Raffarin has lost his job to everyone who can remember the UN antics before the Iraq war’s favourite, Dominique de Villepan. As for Chirac, he’ll probably be alright – being able to sack your Prime Minister is a pretty neat trick to be able to pull at times like these – though it’ll probably ensure this is his last term now. Interesting that de Villepan has never stood for elected office and yet has been Foreign Minister, Home Minister and now Prime Minister of France! Wonder when we’ll have someone like that pop out of our unwritten constitution? As for politics domestic, this puts more pressure on the already active “Blair’s time has come” campaign, popular among the press. He should never have announced his future resignation the fool … kicking issues you don’t like into the long grass is all fine and well, as long as your contempt for democracy is strong enough, but kicking oneself there is purely stupid! Supposedly it was widely expected that Blair, desperate to win a reputation for himself in retirement other than Iraq, was hell-bent on leading his last charge into posterity by taking Europe by the horns and actually trying to win that vote he’d promised next spring. Some hope. Even a sturdy kicking, as can only be expected, was to have been his valiant swan song. But now … well, after the little holiday this week, the gloves may be off. Unless we’re given a renewed promise, like the other EU countries yet to hold their referenda, that the climax to his ‘masochism strategy’ is still on, then what’s to hold Brown’s lot back now?

Other, that is, than their leader’s fatal flaw, his lack of killer instinct!

Actually, Brown is an interesting enough character to have many notable flaws. And his premiership will be a troubled one, when it comes. But I’m given to thinking that day will not be too soon. Blair can say “stuff it, we’ve nothing to vote on now” and there will be no coup. Just as the junior partner in their coalition (1994 to this day, and running) called off his dogs of Stop the War and let Blair have his victory in 2003 which has caused them all so much trouble. It could have been explained as a “let him have enough to hang himself”, but it’s not exactly paid off. If Blair keeps to his word – not 100% certain anyway I’ll have you know – and Brown is dumped in the deep of it at the time Blair’s hinted he has marked out, spring 2009, then Labour can be expected to have a rough 12 months or less in office before a taxing election indeed. In Scotland, where they least need it, they’ll get a lot of votes back. People here are suckers for a Scottish candidate, just look at the Lib Dems rise after Paddy Ashdown went for Charles Kennedy. But in England, in London and Birmingham and all the places that actually count for shit, well … Brown will have a fight on his hands indeed. Think 1992 and John Major. Only, without a recent popular war in Iraq from which to parade from the gun tower.

It’s not that I don’t like Gordon Brown. I’m just critical of his personal presentation and charismatic abilities compared to Tony “second coming” Blair. That, and I don’t exactly like the Labour party or believe in social democracy. For his pains, he made the wrong decision that evening in a fancy restaurant with his hitherto junior ally. You should never be sold on promises that big where you, of course, are to go second and not first. Whether you even trust them or not, it’s just madness to think you’ll ever get your turn when there’s little matters like general elections at stake. And then to have done it apparently without a pre-arranged handover date! He’s coming from a bad position. And I foresee trouble for him. Make it double if the tories, sometime this year, pick the competent, charismatic and sellable candidate they’ve long been looking for, after years of trying!

Hot damn, was I right. It's good to know I can call them every once in a while.

Perhaps that's why the air of change in politics on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment feels so good: because only three years ago it was still the thick of the old days. The eternal Blair was still in charge – and had another two years to go – Michael "Something of the Night about him" Howard was the opposition's man, and Barack Obama was only known over here to the kind of politics junkies who stayed up to see the Democratic convention a summer earlier. Guess who!?

The particular political matter of the day I started up about is quite forgotten now of course. European treaties are the stuff of yawns the continent finds itself truly united by. "No constitution please, we're British!" And of course Blair went down as a four letter word for the history books, just like his gifted predecessor and fellow Anthony: Eden.

The latter's career path reminds me more of the current prime minister, in that both served much longer as the eminent heir than the time they finally did get to hold the top job. But one particularly glaring exception is that Eden called a snap general election once his old man retired, and won it.

It's Callaghan which comes to mind with the polls the way they are now. The caretaker who could have won his own term if he'd only struck when time was right. And the poor bastard who's in for a hammering the night before the removal van turns up, to leave political life to the knowledge that some just don't ever win elections.

Two years. Tick tock…

Objective Spring

The arrival of a certain book has been keeping me busy. It's good to be getting a grip on the long postponed ambition at last. The sixth iPhone SDK downloads in the background too, indicating my intent.

Meanwhile though I should note that it's spring at last in Edinburgh. In truth it came a few weeks ago, and has crept back again today after mists and rain and all the rest. There's something about summers – more even than my allergies now ramped back up again – which I was reminded of when I found this article in the New York Times today. Interesting stuff for the politico-historians among us, especially those not even born until a decade later.

Roger Cohen's right about the chaos of ideals. Something certainly changed in the 1960's and remains so to this day; only it seemed to escape absolutely anyone's guess at the time. Also, I should point out that in my view similar things have happened several times before. The reaction – at last – to the Iraq fiasco bears great similarities with earlier American wars, and I doubt the veracity of the notion that the Cold War bore too much in common with the hottest war in history which led to it in the first place. I suspect the lessons we'll see made true again will be from different ages, intermixed. There's no doubting however that it will certainly be interesting.

When I was an impressionable and idealistic teen myself, I read and watched a lot about the supposed miracles of the sixties. Suiting my personality, the affair was actually courtesy of Hunter S. Thompson! Instead of believing too many song lyrics or the furthest reaches of idealistic old films – yet alone in the present day dross still murmured about Cuba – the good doctor's drug addled expeditions were what chimed true for me. Human nature has a habit of denying our equally natural dreams from coming anywhere near to fruition. Communism, revolution, free love (as in beer or in speech!?), and even the preoccupation with nuclear genocide … all have fizzled away back into the fantasies from which they came. Looking back on it, craning your neck to avoid the worst excesses of every involved party, you can't help but see the beauty in failed ideals. That history is littered with them is one of the lessons only age seems to bring to the mind who form them in the first place.

A blue sky gestures me to get on my bike. That I shall. Bearing in mind that it's only when we've made our mistakes we really get to learn!

Tail End of an Angry Dog

All right, so perhaps there is something about where this campaign's been going of late as identified by Fake Steve:

I guess I never realized this. But 80% of the people I talked to today I'm sure do not read a newspaper on a regular basis. Furthermore, many of them could not read a newspaper and comprehend the meaning of the stories. I don't mean that they're illiterate. They could probably read most of the words, as long as they didn't have more than three syllables. What I mean is they could not really understand what the stories mean. Also, I doubt most of them could focus long enough to finish an entire newspaper article.

And yet they vote. This terrifies me.

Actually, it's a view of middle America sadly popular over here in gleefully condescending Europe too, and although amusing it hardly rings as definitive. Instead, I'll turn to another liberal doyenne whose metaphor seems a touch more haunting:

It’s hard to believe that this Hillary is the same Wellesley girl who said she yearned for a more “ecstatic and penetrating mode of living.” What would that young Hillary — who volunteered on Gene McCarthy’s anti-war campaign; who cried the day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed; who referred to some of her “smorgasbord of personalities” in a 1967 letter to a friend as an “alienated academic,” and an “involved pseudo-hippie”; who once returned a bottle of perfume after feeling guilty about the poverty around her — think of this shape-shifting, cynical Hillary?

She’s so at odds with who she used to be, even in the Senate, that if she were to get elected, who would voters be electing?

Obama is like her idealistic, somewhat naïve self before the world launched 1,000 attacks against her, turning her into the hard-bitten, driven politician who has launched 1,000 attacks against Obama.

As she makes a last frenzied and likely futile attempt to crush the butterfly, it’s as though she’s crushing the remnants of her own girlish innocence.

As for my own reaction to Indiana and North Carolina last night – or indeed the next morning over here – it's at least something Clinton didn't win them both. Ever since her resurgence in Ohio and into Pennsylvania I've been getting a bad feeling about this. Let's hope I'm wrong again!

It's just painfully obvious that all she needs to win is a single vote: Barack Obama's concession. The convention is still so long away and the race, no matter what now, helplessly deadlocked. Clinton's shown all the merciless determination. Worse yet, my gut feeling is that she'd be continuity president even above the overlooked recurring Republican rebel McCain.

Bloody Hell Boris

All right, so I was wrong. Phew.

Looking at the figures though, I was on to something. It did indeed go to a second round; and Boris got less transfers than Ken Livingstone. Fortunately it was still fairly close (48% to 52% by my numbers) and far too little to overturn his widely expected first round lead.

One of the BBC's better analysts, Nick Robinson, has an interesting take on Boris's victory.

I agree that this is a huge test for the Tories. Fascinating that it should be via their well known outlier, right in the media's very den. It's being said a lot at the moment that David Cameron may come to rue this particular success; I doubt that myself. People underestimate Boris. I think this could prove to be brilliant.

Certainly, the biggest political schism in terms of image and supposed clout, is now plain to see in Gordon Brown versus Boris Johnson. I just so happen to think that Boris's style and defiantly odd empathic talent will outshine and out-manoeuvre old Gordon in dramatic and even mythic terms the media won't be able to resist. One bites his lip and tries to usher public opinion about as though his pent-up anger weren't writhing in every motion. The other apparently bumbles on, ineffably affable, as though put there just to taunt him. Cameron may just have had his most effective lieutenant placed into position.

Now: is it Boris's dad who wins the by-election?

I've Got a Bad Feeling About This…

The polls close in the hour.

Not here, north of the border, but down in some of England and London in particular. The new yet old Prime Minister faces the usual round of presumed bad results; to be shrugged off by repetitive and disinterested lieutenants in the media tonight and tomorrow. Nothing ever changes there. Add to this however the London mayor election and what was otherwise just a teacup of a contest becomes, by the media's local eye at least, something of a storm.

I don't think Boris will win though.

I'd like him to. I've been voting against Labour (and their Liberal cohorts) for a decade now, ever since I was old enough to vote, and yet so often it's come to naught. Their social democratic whim – albeit sometimes held behind a supposedly Margaret Thatcher shaped fig leaf – went against my principles, and it still does. Their recent shift from governing hegemony to shaky angst, is not alas due to an ideological tide among the public. It's a simple absence of the one thing which made Labour New back in 1997, and which troubled them so once 2003 invited an issue called Iraq to stay. Tony Blair of course. Gordon Brown is no Tony Blair. He's not even the Gordon Brown many of his supporters inside and outside the media had talked up for years to a supposed fever pitch of expectation. Instead, after his first fumble so soon in office, he came across as exactly the grumbling, resentful, inarticulate and indeed stereotypical jealous Scotsman as his enemies had predicted. I never believed the former line of bullshit myself, but even I have been impressed with just how obvious is his fumbling and just how loathing is reaction to all those outside his inner coterie; electorate and all.

But today is no general election. It's just some locals, and a rivalry between Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone. Indeed, in London: if only it were just that. But as I understand it, there's proportional representation at work again. Howard Dean would be proud.

So, as its close, here's my prediction just before it's too late: Boris will get more votes, but just like Al Gore in 2000 and maybe even Barack Obama in 2008, the other guy will win.

Bloody Liberals.

Someone Please Give Howard Dean a Wedgie

As asked rhetorically in the Times:

Whose brilliant idea was it to leave six weeks open before the Pennsylvania primary?

Probably not Dean's personally, but as the genius who drew up the maddening system whereby Clinton and Obama are heading to a knife edged convention irrespective of who actually votes for them … well thanks a lot, Howard. Relentlessly proportional representation sounds good on paper but is one of the best known recipes for a political fudge wherever it's put into practice. John Kerry's deeply faulty coronation so soon in 2004 before Edwards' star had come to shine was wrong as well, but it was a poor lesson to shape the future. 2008 and 2004 are so different politically, yet here we are enduring an overreaction to mistakes long forgotten and even less relevant.

Something due to be knocked out at Denver will be, I sincerely hope, a correction to the primaries. It doesn't have to be a return to the broken dynamic of New Hampshire or Bust, but it sure had better not remain like this. McCain's elegant stroll to a convincing nomination might not be enough all by itself to level up the precarious slope the last national midterms in 2006 exposed under this trailing president; but it's certainly become a factor thanks to the Byzantine procedure still rumbling on far from conclusion among his competitors.

Denver doesn't even happen until late August. What's the betting both candidates are still running by then? What a bitter denouement for what had been until Super Tuesday the most lively and uplifting contest in a generation.

Still, it is of course the stuff of journalistic as well as dramatist's dreams…

Iraq

So, it's five years since the fiasco started.

I was always against invading. It's easy and universally fashionable to say so now, but not entirely uncommon  back in 2003 here in Britain either. My opposition was not the typical pacifist stuff; I thought my objection to be far more objective. Naturally. Giving a vile and obdurate dictator a kicking sounds good on paper, but right at the heart of the Middle East? Clearly, this was to be no Falklands. It was the political equivalent of sinking Italian leather shoes into a doorstep gift of flaming excrement. To be blind to this fact beforehand was the worst excess of hubris. That we made an almighty balls up of the occupation thereafter is the very opposite of a surprise.

It'd be good to think that such a woeful mistake will serve a good lesson for the future. That is not however clear. Even if my favoured Obama takes the White House, the long term reaction to this mid-sized cataclysm of an unforced error may well be out of rational control. Vietnam – a war and a failure so very different from Iraq that it's surprising their political overlap seems as substantial as it is – underlay the zero response to the Rwandan cut-throat genocide two decades later, and the humiliating withdrawal from Somalia after some Black Hawks did indeed go down and it was thought better to quit entirely. Somalia today is a much more hateful mess than Lebanon, or even perhaps Iraq … but fortunately for us we just choose not to care, for no discernibly logical reason.

In politics so much can be overreaction to fingers burned in the almost forgotten past. A little moustachioed central European fellow won his rise to the very worst excess of power because of that. Who would war with an irascible but not necessarily unreasonable dictator while the world still mourned its lost sons of 1914? As it turned out: everyone. Just a little too late.

I'm not trying to make any point here about specific conflicts on the horizon, as those we scarcely ever know. I'm certain that the world is a better place today than it was while the Soviet Union existed. But there'll be folly, madness and ludicrous hubris forever more so long as we are alive! There's no such thing as an end to history. Well, that any human will live to glimpse.

Leap-Year Time-Warp

As observed elsewhere, leap days are decidedly unintuitive things. The fact the world spins through space in arbitrary measure – while we won't stand that sort of thing when it comes to our own precious conceit of time – is swept under the carpet until just these occasions. There are leap seconds too, now that we've become good enough at measuring time mechanically then comparing with the stars. Events can take place in those as well: including births, deaths and every sort of inconveniently significant thing as already transpires through the other forgotten and foolish times we fake daylight savings with. Just don't get me started on that, not while I'm still living in brief sweet GMT.

So, leap, or intercalary days if you like … what about them strikes as noteworthy?

Well, it's just pleasingly absurd to think the last time it was February the 29th we were all back in 2004. John Kerry was already the challenger-apparent for what was set to be an unjustly dull election while Iraq was such a hotbed. Just why primary voters didn't flock to the better natural politician – John Edwards – I don't know. And I'll not pull out a baloney explanation for why conservatives haven't rallied to Mike Huckabee either! My beloved PowerBook wasn't quite a year old and Panther was the new big cat on its hard drive. Ah, Exposé. I'd only persuaded a single switcher back then too. An already ageing Athlon XP handled Battlefield 1942 for me. All right, in glacial John gaming time it wasn't really all that long ago…

Wind back another one, and it was Feb 29, 2000. The Clintons were still lingering in the White House, and Al Gore was already lined up against some wannabe Texan from Connecticut who pounded poor and honest John McCain with three more primary wins that day on his way to the nomination, and – infamously of course – the presidency. I was running Windows 98 on … a several years outdated Pentium 133 laptop and a crotchety 450 MHz K6-II. Was it the retro charm of Grand Prix 2 I was still in to then, or Civilization II? I've really never been cutting edge when it comes to gaming! But I was already used to 24-7 broadband internet by then, only just not at home.

One more back and things really get weird. In 1996 Bill Clinton was at the prime of his pre-Lewinsky charm, set for an all too obvious win, so it wasn't the presidentials which I remember much from that year. I didn't have my very own personal computer yet, it was a shared household 486 in Windows for Workgroups and very often MS-DOS for games and wavetable soundcard hijinks. It wouldn't be until that summer that I read Hunter S. Thompson for the first time, and really woke up to the potential of writing and far flung thoughts. John Major's Tories were still in power in these parts – wildly villified – making me wonder just what was rotten at the core of democracy if this was what people really felt. I remember actually caring about Formula One back in those days, presumably eager to see how the great Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi would do with the car Michael Schumacher had just won his second championship with before trading teams and places. It turned out the magic was all Schuey. I also vaguely recall David Baddiel splitting with Rob Newman – an absurdist comedy partnership I had liked – and penning one of the more annoying football anthems of all time with Frank Skinner. It didn't come home by the way … that seemed to actually matter back in those days. Meanwhile I read of chopped Harley-Davidsons, played only the finest half dozen costly Super Nintendo cartridges, and occasionally did battle with System 7 … though only on inexplicably archaic Classics.

1992 even sounds like another whole age in history. I didn't even have my SNES until Christmas. Guess my main tech was playing with the night sky on SkyGlobe for DOS on a monochrome 286 Amstrad! You could hear the processor struggling with screen updates, I kid you not. I remember the UK general election, in that the media were appalled with the outcome … but not for another few months back in (my arbitrary hook) February of course! A Clinton succeeded a Bush as we were being reminded until fairly recently as well; some old guy who said to read his lips a lot and had some sort of business with notably poor-marksman "Saddam Insane" from one of those countries that started with "IRA" and had lots of sand. There were Scuds too … and a noticeable atmosphere of propaganda which even my 11 year old self didn't fail to notice while the merry foray went on. All the cockpit footage looked very sci-fi and impressive and all – echoed by a whole era of war games hot on its heels – but there was still death and destruction, right? Why weren't we so bothered when the other guys where getting slaughtered, or that bomb shelter full of kids? Not that I was a pacifist … no, I'd already all the cynicism and intrigue in me to make a full blown politico!

1988 … ring any bells? I can remember teachers and classmates, a friend or two I still have kicking around even now, but nothing really big-picture. Maybe I'd learned BASIC already on the (mysteriously ancient, yet again) TRS-80, Vic-20 and Apple ][ (don't know which one) we had at times at home. Maybe not though. Whenever Woz's one arrived, I must admit that floppy disks seemed so futuristic compared to saving your code to cassette!

1984 … original Macintosh. We had BBC's at school though. Or rather our school had one BBC Micro, and that wasn't necessarily 1984 either. (Like I can be bothered checking their history…) I remember it would show up on a trolley maybe once a term, its armour-clad monitor on top and a reading-glasses-twiddling teacher would open a manual and peck at keys until the damned machine did anything at all, much to our youthful ho-hum. There was a time though when I knew enough to summon:

10 PRINT "MISCHIEVOUS MESSAGE OF YOUR CHOICE ";
20 GOTO 10

Now that was an afternoon!

Damn, if only my folks had been wealthy and daring enough to pick up a 128k. I'm sure MacPaint would have impressed me more then than when its ubiquitous clones caught up with me many years later. I can even remember trying my hand at a text editor in BASIC just so I could save files on those instant-off micro's we did happen to come by. Yeah, I know, I'm no Linus Torvalds, but floppies … and the better plastic box-shaped kind, in 1984, oh yeah, let me at that mouse!

In spring 1980 I was only a few months old, so I can't lend any truisms about Carter versus Reagan from any sort of past perspective. According to this system of time travel then, that's as far back as our vehicle gets. No cheating now.

One trusism I can offer though is that tiresome one about the unpredictability of time. Tech gets better – in ways we only occasionally suspect beforehand – while other things, well, I'm tempted to say they disappoint in comparison! Not always though. In politics its so often the leaders which really matter. Things I and many others haven't paid much thought to in years, like oh say the whole Middle East peace process if you can even remember that in earnest, can and probably will resume once Washington has its purge after the election. Obama or McCain, it's all good. Hillary even too, though frankly I'm beginning to make that time honoured mistake of overlooking her before all's said and done. Next Tuesday, yeah, or a ghoullish replay of the machinations which saw the last overthrow of a democratic winner, right before Al Gore's eyes again!

Anyway, even I detect my rambling now so don't worry, this post comes to a close. Obviously the future is the place to point it: what do I think tomorrow's Feb 29 will be like, in 2012? UNIX based, open sourced, well designed, and safer than today? Yeah, sure, like legend's dragon's die so soon. Another maxim I've come to suspect is true over the years is that good and evil are perspective as much as anything. So too can be, alas, up and down if you follow long enough to see this most strained distortion. More on that later, as I cover the extremist's refuge. But for now I'll say the truth, which is I can't even tell you what happens in November yet alone leaps and bounds ahead. The human world in its seething politics and glorious complexity is like that. You can suspect, intuit, and maybe conjure up sound reasoning in retrospect; but projections alone are a mug's game. One I just can't keep from playing.

January of More Than Just a Year

Just read a little opinion piece in the Times, called America’s Riveting Democracy. I quite agree. There's one reason I pay more attention to American politics than the minutiae of Westminster or even Holyrood, just a couple of miles from my doorstep. It matters, and it will keep doing so until much more changes in the world than merely as things seem for now. Obama, Clinton, McCain and Romney are bigger players on that vital stage than any Gordon Brown or Alec Salmond. There's more to it than just scale. As I listen to the last track on last year's best album – Kira Neris' first – I'm minded it's more fundamental than all of that. We are talking of one thing: humanity.

Thank Huck For That

As a long-term politics junkie, I had been dreading the Iowa caucus. The US presidential election of 2008 had been building up promise since the midterms – the promise of credible candidates who might not be white males of all unheard of things – and was lined up to be the fall back down to earth. The good caucus-goers of little Iowa could well have seen to it that the historically wide open field was chopped right down to size. "Barack Obama? For real?" "A Mormon?" "Hillary?" Well, actually, I'd been fearing a simple win for Romney and Clinton. If they had managed that, the primaries may well have been a foregone conclusion … the process being as it is. The two of them were clearly able candidates and each had institutional backing to put shame to many others. But they lost anyway. Suddenly things took a turn for the better.

Back in 2000 I was looking on from over here in Scotland and rooting for John McCain. I still quite like him, despite his choice to be the last standing contrarian on Iraq, though I don't rate his chances. Eight years ago he won a pretty resounding victory over the fellow the BBC insisted on calling George Bush Junior in New Hampshire, but Iowa's choice turned out to be the real winner. Bush and his people had money and manpower on their side and steamrollered the noted Vietnam vet and outsider. The Democrat race of the time proved to be even more boring. Indeed, that election only heated up after everything was over and it turned out to be the closest (and sourest) of modern times. Let's not dwell on the rightful winner!

In 2004 my perfectly ineffectual support went to John Edwards. Bush was irredeemable after the horrendously fateful decision to overlook Afghanistan and invade Iraq. I basically – as armchair expert – saw Edwards as the best possibility to unseat the incumbent. It was Iowa again which saw the early end to that idea. John Kerry, erudite bore, rushed to an early victory among the Democrats and went on to the brutally effective defeat written out for him in the first place. Edwards, the much more interesting running mate, got to lose his Senate seat for nothing other than an implied stain of failure. America and the world won four more years of misdirection. Happy-happy joy-joy.

So yeah … dread. I'd been listening to the commentators and watching the polls, but I didn't really think anything good would happen. Thankfully it did.

I'll make no secret of it: this time round I'm supporting Barack Obama. History making racial equality issues aside, he's the one who seems to understand the complexity of the wider world the best. Most of what he says about Iraq, Iran and the other regions where American influence is crucial, just sounds better grounded to my distant ears than what comes out of Hillary Clinton or (sigh) Rudi Giuliani. (Believe me: I'd like to be on Rudi's side in some ways but his foreign policy vision is nearly indescribably catastrophic!) I know it's hardly a surprise that a European would be backing a Democrat, and that Obama's obvious ability at speechmaking makes him an easy choice, but I like to humour myself and claim that there's real substance to this. He comes across to me as that rare combination of educated intellect like Kerry's, with charisma such as Edwards' or Clinton. No: Bill Clinton before you ask. That really is a weakness for poor Hillary … though she of all people can get around it.

Then there's Huck. Why would a moderate like myself be happy about an Evangelical conservative from Arkansas coming in first in the Republican caucus? It's not the easy and obvious answer I more or less suggested by saying that! I take Huckabee seriously. I really do think he's been the dark horse of recent weeks and might well reach nomination. I also wouldn't count against him winning in November, whether up against Obama, Clinton or Edwards. So why am I pleased?

Because he's just the sort of candidate to really wake the Republicans up again and make this into an epic contest, that's why.

There's a tremendous amount to be decided by whoever becomes the next president. I'm not just saying that as one of so many who couldn't abide George W, but as a fairly self evident piece of fact. We live in thoroughly interesting times. Climate change? Global terrorism? China? If anything, the Bush administration have been putting off everything that's come their direction since at least 2006. Much more is to come as well of course. Who expected national security and foreign policy to be so all-consuming back in the January snow of 2000? Not me.

I was busy cheering on plucky old John McCain. Who knows what could happen…