Shaun Ley's week

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By Shaun Ley Presenter, BBC Radio 4's The World at One

I hesitated before starting to write this week. I know that for some of you my subject will provoke the same sort of despair/rage/lack of interest which may have caused you to throw things at the radio or re-tune it for the duration.

The British press is fascinated with the US race. Some of the public are not

Yes, it's the U.S. presidential election, of seemingly intense interest to some of us, and apparently a cause of complete indifference in some of you.

The Democratic Convention attracted a lot of coverage, both of what was said and what went unsaid.The fascination with Barack Obama's candidacy seems to have spread well beyond news programmes.

Yet I'm not sure how much of this is new.

My memory of the last campaign in 2004 is of pretty intense coverage of the Bush-Kerry contest, and of all the stages in between, including Howard Dean's infamous scream, and the Swift Boat campaign to discredit Senator Kerry's war record, plus a similar controversy over President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

BBC liberals

Our programme is a little betwixt and between. Martha was able to record reaction to Hillary Clinton's speech on Wednesday morning, thanks to the time difference (it was midnight in Colorado, and 7am in London, by which time we're usually in the office) and the willingness of two British attendees to stay up late in order to speak to us.

Similarly, on Monday, we spoke live to an analyst attending the convention, because he was booked in advance and able to get up early for us (which is really a compliment to our audience; listeners who are worth getting up early for).

Quite rightly, some of you are keen to ensure that we give the same sort of coverage to John McCain and the Republican Convention, suspicious that this has been some sort of Obamafest, dreamt up by the liberals who lurk in the darkest editorial corners of the BBC.

Ask voters to choose between a generic Republican and a generic Democrat, and the Democrat wins by a mile; ask them to choose between McCain and Obama, and the lead for the Democrat shrinks dramatically.

Mind you, on The World This Weekend, we spoke to Laura Washington, a distinguished African-American writer and academic who's observed Senator Obama flourishing in Chicago politics, and who offered a corrective to the image of a political neophyte, unsullied by the grubby compromises of the city machine.

We'll tell the McCain story, too. Here the excitement lies less in the candidate himself (there've been a fair few white middle-aged men with distinguished military service who've run for president before, from both parties) than in the fact that he is apparently running Senator Obama so close.

After all, the Republican label is now openly described, even by Republicans themselves, as toxic.

Idiosyncratic nominee

The party was hammered in the mid-term Congressional elections in 2006 and has done no better in the various elections held since.

President Bush is deeply unpopular, presiding over a controversial military engagement in Iraq and a weakening economy.

In 2004, Barack Obama was barely known on the national stage, until he was asked to fill one of the primetime slots in support of John Kerry

Even Republicans who loathe their idiosyncratic nominee will hold their nose and put on a show of support in Minneapolis-St Paul.

In all probability, their convention will look as united as the Democrats managed to.

Yet if Senator McCain snatches victory from the jaws of defeat this November (or, perhaps more pertinently, Senator Obama snatches defeat from the jaws of victory), it arguably could be more damaging to his party than a narrow and respectable defeat.

Separated from power?

For candidate McCain's coat has short tails; in other words, few Republicans will win seats in Congress on the back of his success.

He is sufficiently separated from the tarnished Republican brand that people may vote for him even as they vote Democrat for the congressional seats up at the same time.

So a President McCain would be dealing with a Congress dominated by Democrats.

John Edwards was John Kerry's pick for vice president. Now he's nowhere.

If the analysts are to be believed, their majority would be so great that they could veto his legislation and overturn any block he imposed on theirs.

The separation of powers which is the rock of the US Constitution could in effect mean a president separated from power.

A lot of journalists at the convention have been struck by what a difference four years have made. In 2004, Barack Obama was barely known on the national stage, until he was asked to fill one of the primetime slots in support of John Kerry.

Today he's the nominee. But I've been reflecting on the absence of someone who four years ago was everywhere.

Affair revelations

John Edwards was Kerry's pick for vice-president, a telegenic populist lawyer, with the added advantage of a southern power base in a party which has struggled to win in the South since many Democrats from that part of the country were seduced away by Richard Nixon's southern strategy at the end of the 1960s.

Today, John Edwards is a non-person, after the revelation at the beginning of August of an affair with a campaign supporter.

I was in the United States when the story broke, more or less at the same time as the fighting erupted in Georgia. That weekend, the TV networks were torn between which was the most important story.

Planting stories on the internet, in particular, is a growing political tactic, and will feature heavily over the next ten weeks of the campaign

Just eight months ago, Edwards finished in second place in the Iowa caucuses, beating Hillary Clinton.

Even though he dropped out of the nomination battle, he had cause to hope for some reward in an Obama administration, perhaps as attorney general.

It wasn't so much the affair which destroyed that prospect; it was lying about it, and above all the sympathy for his wife, whose terminal cancer became something of a focus of his presidential campaign.

The affair aside, there's probably some relief for the party leadership that he won't be around. Mr Edwards attracted his share of negative publicity.

Gossip pages

He admits politics has made him narcissistic, and during the 2004 campaign, opponents eagerly seized upon allegations about how much he paid for a haircut, claims which neatly undermined his "man of the people" image.

Like many such stories which make their way onto television and radio and into the newspapers, they first emerged on internet gossip pages.

Conventional news outlets used to turn up their collective nose at such sources. But all that is changing.

Could a Republican win offer some hope for Mr Brown?

Similarly, the Edwards adultery was first written about last autumn in The National Enquirer, a much sleazier version of the magazines you can pick up here at the supermarket check out.

Most of the mainstream media ignored it, and they've since been roundly criticised for doing so.

Planting stories on the internet, in particular, is a growing political tactic, and will feature heavily over the next 10 weeks of the campaign.

It raises particular difficulties in verifying sources; but once one newspaper or broadcaster goes with the story, others will follow.

What starts on the other side of the Atlantic usually reaches here eventually, perhaps in time for our next general election.

Labour and Conservative politicians flocked to Denver, eager to make contacts with a possible new US administration, and perhaps keen to pick up a few tips for themselves (they could start with learning lessons about political engagement).

Both parties seem attracted by the idea of an Obama presidency. Yet Gordon Brown, for one, might have cause to hope for another Republican in the White House come January of next year.

If a photogenic, relatively inexperienced newcomer can be trounced by a political veteran with three decades of experience and a rather grumpy demeanour, maybe it can happen here. Now that really would be the audacity of hope.