Charisma alone is not enough

Can Barack Obama restore the American public's faith in politics? And can David Cameron restore the British public's faith in the Tory Party? Here's today's Journal column.

---

Politicians are ultimately frail vessels for the hopes they are meant to bear. They are only human, yet sometimes we invest them with such superhuman qualities as to practically invite disappointment.

Tony Blair certainly fell into that category. When he took over as Prime Minister in May 1997 after a dismal period of Tory misrule, the sense of a new beginning in the country was almost palpable.

As the man himself memorably said on that bright morning at London’s Royal Festival Hall as Labour activists gathered to celebrate their victory: “A new dawn has broken, has it not?”

Nearly twelve years on, another politician finds himself in a similar position. Barack Obama this week took over from quite possibly the worst president in 200 years of American history, and once again a country is filled with new hope and optimism.

As George W. Bush leaves office after eight tumultuous years, it is interesting to reflect on the part he played in souring the British public’s relationship with Mr Blair.

We will, of course, never know what might have happened had Mr Bush not decided to go to war with Iraq, and Britain not been dragged into the imbroglio, but the suspicion persists that the course of the Blair premiership would have been rather different.

As the late Robin Cook noted in his resignation speech in the Commons in March 2003, had the hanging chads in Florida fallen the other way and Al Gore become president instead, the whole debacle would probably never have happened.

Would Mr Blair still be Prime Minister even now? It will, I suspect, go down as one of the great modern political counterfactuals, alongside "What would have happened if John Smith had lived?"

Our experiences over the past decade have perhaps caused us to distrust “charisma” as a political commodity. Certainly we seem as a nation to be less easily persuaded by Tory leader David Cameron’s easy charm than we were by Mr Blair’s in the mid-1990s.

American voters, though, have always been more star-struck, even though they have suffered far deeper and more bitter disillusionments over the past 40 years than we have on this side of the pond.

Yet despite the national humiliation of the Watergate scandal and the sheer, downright sleaziness of the Monica Lewinsky affair, they have never quite given up on their search for someone capable of stepping into the shoes of their lost leader, John F. Kennedy.

Mr Obama is the kind of politician who has it in him to fill that void in the American psyche, to renew their faith in politics and political leadership, but of course, the corollary of that is he also has it in him to further deepen that disillusionment – as Mr Blair ultimately did in the UK.

President Obama has at least made a positive start. The promised dismantling of Guantanamo Bay has already begun, and moves are already under way to bring an end to the Iraq adventure.

But if anything, the new leader of the western world seems to be intent on playing down those great expectations that surround him.

The inauguration speech did not last an hour and a half. It contained little soaring rhetoric. And there were no compelling soundbites of the magnitude of "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Instead, the watchword was "responsibility" as Mr Obama sought to present himself perhaps less in the mould of JFK and more in the mould of Gordon Brown - less a Hollywood-style superstar and more a “serious man for serious times."

Indeed, Mr Obama’s use of the phrase “a new era of responsibility” on Tuesday carried uncanny echoes of our own Prime Minister’s attacks on “the age of irresponsibility.”

While as a soundbite, this is not quite in the league of “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” it will probably go down as the defining message of Mr Obama’s inaugural address.

Back home, though, the other big political story of the week was the return of Ken Clarke to the Tory frontbench as Shadow Business Secretary after nearly 12 years in the wilderness.

This too was in part a consequence of the economic downturn, but in the broader political picture, it is a recognition of the fact that the Tories have not been making the best use of their available talents.

Much has already been written about the head-to-head between Mr Clarke and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, two politicians as different as chalk and cheese.

With Mr Clarke, what you see is by and large what you get, but the former Hartlepool MP has always been a much more elusive figure, ultimately more at home operating in the shadows than in front of the camera.

They do, however, have two very important things in common. They are both very divisive figures within their respective parties, and they are both wildly pro-European.

It will doubtless be a fascinating contest, but I personally think the 68-year-old former Chancellor has sold himself short. He should be back as Shadow Chancellor, flaying Labour for its squandering of the golden economic legacy he left them in 1997.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Mr Clarke’s return is what it says about Mr Cameron.

His undoubted charisma won him the party leadership after he wowed the 2005 conference with his oratory, and it has won him a generally positive public image, but it has not been enough to create that sense of inevitability behind a Tory election victory that Mr Blair enjoyed in the mid-90s.

The return of Mr Clarke has given the Cameron team a much-needed injection of experience and gravitas at a time when it has been struggling to establish itself as a government-in-waiting.

Like Mr Obama, perhaps Mr Cameron too is recognising that charisma alone is not enough.

A tale of two elections

It's all change in America, no change at Glenrothes - but which result tells us more about the current state of UK politics? Here's today's Journal column.

---

It was a tale of two elections, one that has seemingly given new hope to the whole world, another rather closer to home that has given new hope for Gordon Brown and his once-beleaguered premiership.

One outcome - the victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election - was widely expected. The other - Labour's victory in Thursday night's Glenrothes by-election - was rather less so.

The first brought the sense of a fresh beginning for America and possibly the world, encapsulated in the words of Mr Obama's acceptance speech "change has come."

The second, by contrast, conveyed a message of “no change just yet,” at least from the voters of Glenrothes but also possibly from a wider British public that currently seems more content with Mr Brown.

Taking Mr Obama first, it has been notable how much of the coverage of his victory has focused on his colour when it was scarcely an issue in the campaign itself.

I don't deny it's a remarkable achievement for an African-American to become president of a country that 40 years ago denied blacks the right to travel on the same buses as whites, but Mr Obama won because of his charisma, not his colour.

Above all, he won because he successfully presented himself as the change candidate at a time when America appears to be crying out for change.

His republican rival John McCain also lost it by failing to do enough to distinguish himself from the increasingly unpopular George Bush, and also by appearing to be somewhat complacent about the state of the US economy.

Much discussion has already surrounded the impact of Sarah Palin, Mr McCain's surprise choice of vice-presidential nominee, on the eventual result.

On the one hand, she undoubtedly energised the Republican Party’s campaign and enabled Mr McCain to re-connect with a part of its core vote that has always distrusted him.

On the other, she was plainly out of her depth when dealing with foreign policy issues and, for all her freshness as a Washington "outsider," came over as something of a political ingenue.

All things considered, perhaps a 72-year-old man who has had cancer four times should have paid slightly more heed to the need for experience in choosing the person who would have been "a heartbeat away from the presidency."

As for what it means for UK politics, it was predictable that the two main parties would offer wildly differing interpretations of the significance of Mr Obama's triumph.

For Tory leader David Cameron, the important point was the message of change. For Mr Brown, it was the victory of progressive politics over the neo-Conservative right.

Both are plausible enough interpretations, but for me, the sight of British Tories attempting to clamber aboard the Obama bandwagon has been one of the more amusing aspects of the campaign.

No matter that Mr Obama is the most left-wing president since Franklin D. Roosevelt - there's absolutely nothing the ideology-free-zone that is today's Tory Party won't do to get with the zeitgeist.

For all the understandable excitement about Mr Obama, though, it is what happened in Glenrothes which says more about the current state of British politics.

That this is an extraordinary triumph for Mr Brown cannot be in doubt, even allowing for the fact that local issues dominated the by-election campaign.

Consider where the Prime Minister was before the conference season two months ago. He had lost three by-elections on the trot, all of them badly, and there was a growing perception in the party that he was a "loser."

Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband was openly agitating for his job, while deputy leader Harriet Harman told friends "this is my time."

There was a widespread expectation of an autumn coup against Mr Brown's leadership, and dark talk that up to 15 ministers would refuse to serve come the reshuffle - a rumour which, had it come to fruition, would surely have spelled the end of him.

Even at the end of what was judged a successful conference, the shadow of another disastrous defeat in Glenrothes still hung over him like a sword of Damocles, as I noted at the time.

Instead, Mr Brown now finds himself back in the game and with an outside chance - I would put it no more strongly than that - of winning that elusive fourth Labour term.

Okay, so it's largely down to his handling of the economic crisis - but that fighting conference speech and the coup-de-theatre of Peter Mandelson's reshuffle comeback have certainly played their part.

Up until now, the Brown renaissance, or the "Second Brown Bounce" as some have called it, has been largely driven by a media narrative - a general consensus among the commentariat that the Prime Minister's position has improved.

But there is no substitute for actual real-life votes, and Thursday's result has provided concrete evidence that the "media narrative" is actually not that far off the mark.

In other words, the Labour fightback is no mere media invention designed to make politics more interesting again for readers, viewers and listeners. It really is now under way.

It doesn't prove that Mr Brown is a "winner." But it does show that he is not quite the inveterate loser that some thought he was.

So is it now "game on" for the next general election? Could we soon be back to a position where a hung Parliament, rather than an outright Tory victory, once more looks the most likely outcome?

Well, hang on. One swallow doesn't make a summer, and it's important for Mr Brown and Labour not to get carried away with Thursday night's success.

The truth is that Mr Cameron remains as much an overwhelming favourite to win the next general election as Mr Obama was to win the presidency.

But unlike Senator McCain, Gordon Brown still has time on his side.

A well-deserved victory

Okay, so I admit I didn't originally want Barack Obama to win the US Presidency. I thought he was too inexperienced, and there was something about his very smoothness, his apparent reliance on style over content, that reminded me uncomfortably of Tony Blair. In addition, I had a bit of a sentimental attachment to John McCain on the grounds that for someone of his age to win the presidency would give encouragement to clapped-out old gits everywhere.

But there's no point being churlish about this. Obama deserves his victory if only for having stood up to the onslaught of two of the hitherto most powerful machines in world politics - the Republican machine, and the Clinton machine.

I still don't buy all the silky, JFK-style rhetoric. I've already lived too long and seen too many smooth-tongued politicians worm their way into the affections of the British public to believe in all that stuff. But underneath it all Obama strikes me as a decent sort of man, and if he can restore some stability to American foreign policy and its domestic economy over the next few years he will be well on the way to becoming a great president.

Did he win it, or did McCain lose it? A bit of both I think. Obama clearly came into this election as the "change candidate" and played that hand for all it was worth, both against Clinton and later against McCain. But I think McCain also made errors, notably in failing to do enough to differentiate himself from the increasingly despised George W. Bush and claiming after the collapse of Lehman brothers that the American economy was "fundamentally sound."

Was making Sarah Palin his running mate an error? That's a difficult one to call. She certainly energised the McCain campaign and brought a much-needed touch of glamour, but perhaps a man of 72 who has had cancer four times should have paid slightly more heed to experience in selecting the person who would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency."

As for the most hilarious spectacle in the election, it has to be the sight of British Tories attempting to clamber aboard the Obama bandwagon once it became reasonably clear he was going to win. No matter that he's the most left-wing president since Franklin D. Roosevelt - there's absolutely nothing the ideology-free-zone that is today's Tory Party won't do to get with the zeitgeist.

Mahmoud Ahmedinejad sleeps with the fishes

As a huge fan of The Godfather, I loved this report on the Today Programme this morning about a US foreign policy analyst's attempt to draw a complex analogy between the classic movie and America's current position in the world.

He likens 9/11 to the flowerstall attack on the ageing Don Vito Corleone, and Bush's response to the al-Qaeda outrage to hothead Sonny's attempts to punish the rival gang leader responsible for his father's attempted assassination.

In terms of the current presidential contest, McCain, who some claim would like to present the Iranian president with a horse's head in the bed, is also described as a "Sonny," while his opponent, Barack Obama, is compared to the Corleone's lawyer, Tom Hagen, the arch-conciliator who would always seek to negotiate his way out of a family crisis.

So far, so plausible. But the big, unanswered question in all this is where is Michael Corleone - and this, I fear, is where the analogy, enjoyable though it is, breaks down.

Michael may have been brighter than Sonny and employed more subtle methods, but the whole point of the film is that he turned out to be even more murderous, culminating in the desolate scene at the climax of the second movie when, having slaughtered all his rivals, he surveys the barren wilderness that is his life.

Is anyone seriously suggesting this as a model for future US foreign policy? Well, let's hope not.

Cameron and Clegg v the system

My Saturday column in today's Newcastle Journal takes as its theme the current controversy over MPs expenses and the conduct of House of Commons business generally and the way in which both David Cameron and Nick Clegg have both sought to exploit that.

As the more perceptive observers of Tory politics have already noted, Mr Cameron is clearly seeking to position himself in the vanguard of a growing public desire for the modernisation of our political institutions. So, too, in his different way, is Mr Clegg.

In this sense they are both "running against Westminster" in the same way that Barack Obama and to a lesser extent John McCain are running against their own party establishments.

It's not good news for Gordon Brown, who fluffed the opportunity to seize the reform mantle last summer by bringing forward a rather timid constitutional reform package, long before the "dodgy donations" affair put paid to his ambitions to restore trust in British politics.

I want John, you want Barack

Just occasionally, I disagree with my own readers. The US presidential race is one such instance.

I'm with McCain. You voted:

Barack Obama 42%
John McCain 25%
Hillary Clinton 20%
Mitt Romney 3%
Mike Huckabee 2%
None of these 8%

What I'm hoping for out of Super Tuesday

I don't have a vote in the US presidential election, and I doubt I'll be filling this blog with speculation about it over the next nine months, but here, for what is worth, is my take on each of the five candidates left in the race.

Barack Obama simply isn't ready to be president. Sure, he's got charisma, sure, he says the right things about Iraq, but he's done nothing of note in US federal politics and his election to the presidency at this stage of his career would represent a triumph of style over substance.

Hillary Clinton is a good social democrat and if she were anyone else but Hillary Clinton I would be rooting for her. But as I have explained before, the greater health of US democracy requires that the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton era is brought to an end.

Mitt Romney is a very right-wing version of Jed Bartlett. Enough said.

Mike Huckabee is a good Christian and a man I agree with on many issues, but his selection as the Republican candidate would simply be too divisive and open the way to an Obama-Clinton landslide in November.

So, almost by a process of elimination, it's John McCain for me. I think he is the right person to restore some credibility to the White House after Dubya and, as Ken Clarke said (although not in so many words) on Question Time last week, electing a 71-year-old to the presidency would give new hope to old gits everywhere.

I'm hoping he will achieve a clear win tonight, with an inconclusive result on the Democrat side that will cause Obama and Clinton to go on fighting while McCain can concentrate on being statesmanlike. And before any of my leftie friends accuse me of letting the side down, I am at least being consistent.

Agree? Disagree? Take part in my quick presidential poll HERE.

Nick Robinson and the US elections

Earlier this week I took BBC political editor Nick Robinson to task on this blog for focusing on the frankly irrelevant question of whether Gordon Brown is "enjoying" being Prime Minister. The debate on this continues in the comments to the original post.

Today, Nick was back with a post listing eight reasons why Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primaries will reverberate through British politics over the coming weeks. And as the excellent Hopi Sen has already pointed out elsewhere, most of them are complete piffle.

I don't want to appear as if I'm running a campaign against Nick. I actually like the guy and remember him from my time in Westminster as one the few senior political journalists who actually spoke to members of the regional lobby. On one occasion he even agreed, at my wife's request, to take a mobile phone photograph of her and me outside No 10 which she still shows off to her mates occasionally.

Nevertheless I am beginning to wonder whether he is falling into the trap - an occupational hazard for all very influential journalists - of seeking to shape the political agenda rather than interpreting it for the benefit of his audience.

The last paragraph of today's post says it all:

"Those who insist that there cannot be any read across from the votes of small American states to British politics will be ignored because they simply don't get it. The political classes are gripped by this campaign. It will continue to feed into commentary, oratory and prediction all year - sometimes absurdly, occasionally aptly. The battle between Clinton and Obama, McCain, Romney and Huckabee is, like it or not, a part of Britain's electoral struggle."

Roughly translated, this means:

"Because, in the absense of a UK general election, I and my senior colleagues in the world of political journalism are gripped by this campaign to the point of obsession, the poor bloody viewer, listener and reader will continue to be forced to listen to us all trying to draw spurious analogies between it and the UK political scene whether or not this is actually justified."

The job of BBC political editor has always involved striking a delicate balance between reporting and punditry. For all his all-round excellence, Robinson's predecessor Andrew Marr occasionally fell off that tightrope, for instance when he publicly commiserated with Alastair Campbell over the death of Dr Kelly.

Far be it from me to teach the man at the top of my former profession how to suck eggs...but Robinson would be better-off in my view following the example of John Cole, who never forgot that the reporting role came first.

Bill Richardson is my man

Courtesy of Iain Dale I couldn't resist having a go at the Electoral Compass USA test designed to see which presidential election candidate comes closest to your views.

The answer in my case is the Democrat outsider Bill Richardson, with Hillary Clinton not far behind. The candidate whose views I am furthest away from is the Republican, Fred Thompson.

Bill Richardson would be a good vice-presidential candidate to Clinton or Obama in my view - despite his English-sounding name he's actually a Hispanic so would draw the large Spanish vote in.

I also expect Fred Thompson to end up on the ticket as a running mate to either John McCain or Rudy Guiliani.

The US elections

I'm no great expert on American politics. Indeed I have never really understood it, how for instance someone who couldn't remember the name of the Pakistani president in a live TV interview (I'll bet he can remember it now) could ever be elected, or how someone who lied about not having had "sexual relations with that woman Miss Lewinsky" could have remained in office after being found out. It's clearly a political culture where different sorts of rules apply to that of our own.

Nevertheless, I do know enough about politics in general to know that elections are generally won and lost in the centre ground, and enough about the USA to know that for many Americans, Hillary Clinton remains a dangerously divisive figure. It is my strong hunch, therefore, that if Clinton emerges after Iowa, New Hampshire and "Super Tuesday" as the runaway favourite for the Democratic nomination, the election is the Republicans' to lose.

Realistically the presidency is going to go to one of six men and one woman. Although there are a number of fringe contenders, the serious candidates are, on the Republican side, Rudy Guiliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and John McCain, and on the Democrat side, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Mrs Clinton.

Tonight's Iowa caucuses are likely to be won by Obama and Huckabee. That does not, however, mean they are likely to be their party's nominees. In fact it will mean little in the bigger scheme of things besides giving them some temporary momentum going into the more important battles over the coming weeks.

So who do I think will emerge victorious? Well, with the Republican nomination more wide open, and hence less likely to be resolved by Super Tuesday, I have a view that that party's eventual choice may well depend on who ends up as the Democrat front-runner.

If that is Clinton, my hunch is that the Republicans will plump for the experienced and reassuring figure of McCain. If however Obama emerges victorious on the Democrat side - I think Edwards has probably left himself too much to do - the Grand Old Party may feel that it, too, can gamble on a younger and less experienced candidate such as Romney or even Huckabee.

The key question for the Republican Party in this election is the one rather inelegantly posed by a lady at one of John McCain's campaign meetings, namely: "How do we beat the bitch?" The (rather obvious) answer is to choose the candidate with the greatest appeal to swing voters, and that is McCain.

It is early days, but I am convinced that if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, then the Arizona senator will go on to win not only the Republican nomination but also the presidency.

My preview of 2008

Following on from my annual Review of the political year, here's my political Preview of 2008, first published in yesterday's Newcastle Journal.

***

Twelve months ago, the central question which was dominating British politics as Tony Blair prepared to bow out as Labour leader and Prime Minister was “Can Gordon lose?”

One year on, with Mr Brown having succeeded to the top job unchallenged, the question is: “Can Gordon ever win again?”

The Prime Minister’s decision to funk an autumn election after appearing to prepare and plan for one created a new political narrative in which his administration seemed doomed to failure.

Whether he can recover will not only be the key talking-point of the new political year, but will also go a long way to determining the outcome of the next election whenever it is held.

Before going on to look in detail at Mr Brown’s prospects, here’s three things that, I confidently predict, won’t happen in 2008.

First, there won’t be a general election. Having ruled it out in October, Mr Brown can scarcely change his mind again, and with the economy set to take a turn for the worse, he can only now win by “playing it long.”

Second, there won’t be a referendum on the EU Treaty. It is nothing short of a national disgrace that Labour has broken its promise on this, but the point of maximum danger for the government has now passed, perhaps overshadowed by other events.

Third, the Liberal Democrats won’t change their leader again. They are stuck with Nick Clegg now until the election, though if that turns out as badly for them as the opinion polls are suggesting, the poor chap’s political career could be over at 42.

Away from these shores, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto looks certain to trigger a new wave of instability in the Islamic world, with the position of Pakistani leader and US ally General Pervez Musharraf looking increasingly unsustainable

It is also, of course, election year in the US itself, with the succession to George W. Bush currently looking wide open.

If Hillary Clinton runs away with the Democratic nomination, the Republicans will surely want to counter her with someone of similar weight and experience – and that means either Senator John McCain or former governor Rudy Guiliani.

Much more will become clear after Thursday’s Iowa caucuses which are expected to show which of the numerous candidates currently has what Americans call “the Big Mo.”

But what of Mr Brown and Labour? Well, the short answer to the big question is that, yes, he can recover, but the longer answer is that it depends on the confluence of a number of factors, not all of them within his control.

The first prerequisite of any recovery, besides demonstrating some basic competence, is for the Prime Minister to set out, if not a “vision,” then certainly a “big idea” that provides some connective thread to his government’s actions.

A number of possible options have been suggested, ranging from a new drive for social mobility under the banner of “opportunity for all,” to a generalised commitment towards “building the future,” starting with housing.

Either way, Mr Brown has to come up with something that gives people more of a sense of what his government is about, other than remaining in power for as long as possible.

Secondly, Labour needs to try to switch the focus of attention onto what alternative remedies the Tories are proposing for the nation’s current ills.

The one huge silver lining for Mr Brown in all his travails is that the public’s disappointment with him has not thus far been matched by an outpouring of enthusiasm for David Cameron.

If people don’t currently know what the central purpose of the Brown government is, neither do they know what would be the point of a Cameron one

For sure, the Tory leader is getting the mood music right, but with the sole exception of the proposed cut in inheritance tax, there remains a marked absence of specific, thought-through policies.

But the biggest determining factor in whether Mr Brown can mount a sustained recovery will, as always, be events.

The likelihood of an economic downturn will carry a particular danger for Mr Brown in that he was Chancellor of the Exchequer for ten years. If it does all go wrong, there will be no one else to blame.

Some Tories believe the potential nationalisation of Northern Rock could yet provide a “Black Wednesday” type moment for New Labour.

Their thinking goes that if, in 2008, the government were forced to take a major bank into public ownership, it would symbolise the defeat of everything New Labour was supposed to stand for.

Could it get so bad for Mr Brown that he is forced to consider his position? I don’t consider it particularly likely, but it cannot be entirely ruled out.

Tony Blair’s biographer John Rentoul wrote this week: “The latest idea doing the rounds among serious Labour people is that of a David Miliband-Ed Balls dream ticket, with Miliband as prime minister and Balls as chancellor.”

My only comment on this is that if anyone thinks Miliband-Balls is a “dream ticket,” it is a measure of how bad things have got for Labour.

If there is to be another change of leadership, a more likely option is either Jack Straw as a safe pair of hands, or the return of one of the leading Blairites such as David Blunkett or even Alan Milburn.

So, cards on the table time - what do I think? Well, mainly because I do not think the public are yet convinced by Mr Cameron, I think there probably will be a Labour recovery of sorts.

It will not put Labour back into the lead, but it will leave sufficient room for doubt about the outcome of the next election to intensify the speculation about what Mr Clegg will do in the event of a hung Parliament.

The fact remains, though, that Labour’s best opportunity to renew itself in office came with the departure of Mr Blair, and they bungled it.

Whether another such opportunity will come along - and whether Mr Brown will be able to take it this time – is the question to which no political pundit really knows the answer.