I've pointed out quite a few time that only a relatively small proportion of Americans actually voted for Bush. But that was still an awful lot of people who fell for him - and an awful lot who didn't exert themselves to keep him out.

The interesting thing would be a retrospective poll now asking people how they voted. I'd be very surprised if the proportion of people who were willing to say they voted for Bush wasn't way down on the actual figures. The same thing happened here when people were asked if they had voted Tory in the latter days of Thatcher.

What is really strange is not that, when it come to a general election people will come out and vote for a fool because he is their fool. That's how elections everywhere work. It's that, in a system where you have primaries to allow preselection of candidates, people will actually succeed from time to time in selecting the fool out of a bunch of relatively competent alternatives. At least it looks as if this isn't going to happen this time. Thanks.