The departure of Hillary Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn may help her cause. It has certainly improved morale among her staff, who were sick of the screaming matches and unreturned phone calls. And Clinton's campaign adviser Harold Ickes has a far better rapport than Penn with the party elders who comprise the bulk of the superdelegates. Using calculations from Michael Barone of the Almanac of American Politics, Ickes is pushing one argument that is making at least some of the superdelegates think. Hillary has so far won states with a total population of 132m (160m if Michigan and Florida are included) while the total population of the states that went for Obama is 101m.
But a Clinton win seems so unlikely now that thoughts are already turning to her future. Since few of his fellow Democratic senators are impressed by Harry Reid's performance as Senate majority leader, Teddy Kennedy has been sounding Hillary out on a deal: quit the race for the nomination and you get Reid's job. Naturally, Obama is trying to block a move that would put the fate of his legislative agenda into Clinton's hands.
The cruel irony for Clinton
David Axelrod, the architect of Obama's strategy, has more than one reason to be enjoying Clinton's struggles. Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune hack and adviser to Mayor Richard Daley, was turned down by Clinton eight years ago when he auditioned to be her media consultant during her first New York Senate race.
And there is a further cruel irony; nearly 40 years ago, Bill and Hillary were part of the McGovern insurgency that sought to democratise the party's primary system. The fruit of that reform was that Democratic delegates are now assigned by proportional representation. Had the old winner-takes-all rule prevailed, Hillary would be ahead of Obama in pledged delegates by 1,430 to 1,237.
Obama's favourite spook
It is not widely known that John Brennan, one of Obama's closest advisers, is the former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. A 24-year veteran of the agency, Brennan is the campaign's top adviser on intelligence and counterterrorism. He was also the agent who gave President Clinton his daily intelligence brief in the first term; his frustration with Bill's attention span may explain his choice of candidate. Brennan went on to become chief of staff to CIA director George Tenet before retiring from the agency.
Brennan now runs TAC—The Analysis Corp—a private intelligence consultancy down the road from CIA headquarters. Although a natural for intelligence czar if Obama wins, Brennan does not see everything the senator's way. For instance, he supports retrospective legal immunity for the phone companies that helped the government skirt the law by secretly monitoring calls after 9/11. Obama has voted against immunity.
McCain and the media
John McCain has another high-profile endorsement—but it is from Alan Greenspan, former federal reserve chairman. Greenspan is increasingly blamed for the current financial crisis, so McCain's campaign isn't playing up his endorsement with the media.
McCain actually has a close relationship with the media, secured by hours of chatting to them on the "Straight Talk Express" campaign bus. The press corps knew for months that his 19-year-old son Jimmy was a marine in Iraq, but at McCain's request kept it out of the papers (as with Prince Harry in Afghanistan). The oath of silence was eventually broken by The Hill, a Congress free sheet.
McCain's other secret—that he does not want or have secret service protection—was broken by the Washington Post. But the Post's readership has dropped so much that perhaps no one noticed. According to Editor & Publisher, it has lost 100,000 readers, or 13.5 per cent of its circulation, in the last four years.
Oddly, McCain didn't get that much coverage for the one "secret" he did want to publicise. When based at the Naval Air station in Pensacola in the late 1950s, he dated a lusciously proportioned stripper, Marie. She was nicknamed the "Flame of Florida" and carried around a flick knife.
Rice for vice
Despite the rumours, Condoleezza Rice is a very long shot to be McCain's running mate. The secretary of state denies mounting a "Rice for Vice" campaign and insists she just wants to go back to California and write a book on the great achievements of the Bush administration. But the other day she turned up to the Grover Norquist Wednesday morning conservative get-together. Norquist is the guy who demands all Republican candidates swear a blood oath to never raise taxes. (His latest book title is: Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives.)
Condi spoke for half an hour, took questions and impressed the hardboiled crowd. But one attendee confided that her only hope would be if Dick Cheney had another convenient heart murmur, and Bush appointed her to replace him. It is the least Bush could do for the woman who once, in a moment of confusion, called her boss "my husband."
