I think Barack will do it. It's a great package, every thing's there: charisma, rousing speeches, and from what I've been able to glean from the newspapers and online (I'm based in the UK remember), reasonable, common-sense ideas and proposals too.

Winning will be straightforward. It's what comes after that - the actual governing - which will be the mark of the man. It's at this point where the nobility of electioneering dreams face reconciliation with the hard realities and necessary compromises of governing.

It's a universal, immutable political law. I voted three times for Tony Blair. With almost delirium the first time in 1997. How could anyone not withhold that emotion after almost twenty years of stultifying Tory rule ?

In 2001, I voted again, still a believer, still eager; four years on, it was me voting out of a weary sense of duty, more keep the Tories at bay than anything else. Tony's allure had faded. No more golden touch.

And that I suppose is the political law of gravity: soar like a rocket, then drift like a balloon pushed along haphazardly by competing winds, until the inevitable dropping like a stone.