‘I just ha-ate Hillary Clinton. She has done a great disservice to womankind. Every ma-an now thinks he has ca-arte blanche to do as he pleases. She ha-as legitimised adultery’.

It helps if you read that first sentence aloud in an American deep south, Gone with the Wind, accent – for full effect.

This was the view expressed to me by Marilyn on my last night on the West Coast of the USA as we meandered around San Diego bay. I was departing for New York the next day and the conversation had turned to the Republican Convention opening there the day after I would arrive. (Unintentional timing!)

I had ventured into dangerous waters – so to speak – by asking Marilyn what she thought of Hillary Clinton’s chances if she ran for President next time out. I knew she was a Republican because her husband Jim – who was not – told me. Jim and I agreed that Bush had rushed into war, wrongly used the war on terror to justify invading in Iraq (when there was really very little connection between Iraq and Al-Queida) and not thought through what would happen after the invasion. But Hilary’s blow to American womanhood as a reason for not supporting her was a new one on me.

America was buzzing with the presidential election when I visited on my holidays. The TV blasted out politics non-stop including negative broadcast advertising campaigns. Bush and Kerry were heavily engaged in slugging it out in terms of their Vietnam record. Nasty! It’s not a way I would like to see our political campaigning go any further towards.

Anyway – off to New York. I have never felt so safe walking there in my life. There were at least four police officers on every intersection in Manhattan. The choice of New York – a Democrat stronghold despite having a Republican Mayor – as the venue for the Republican Convention was much commented on. New York was the place they wanted to be for a convention whose theme was to be 9/11.

And virtually every speech hinged on 9/11. The Republican strategy was to bring those horrors back to the surface to persuade voters that the war on terror was the Holy Grail. They also wished to thereby push the Iraq war out of the public mind. A very effective strategy too – as the surge for Bush in the post-convention polls demonstrated.

I went to Ground Zero to pay my respects too. Four years ago I had gone with a cross-party transport delegation from the London Assembly to New York and we had gone to meet the NY Port Authority in one of the twin towers. Eerie to stand there now, reading the names of the dead inscribed on the wall. I felt the anger and the horror all over again myself.

The counter-strategy was at work too. There were anti-war protests and I was stopped on many a street corner by Democrat activists asking if they could have my vote for Kerry. I would explain that I didn’t have a vote, but that if I did, they could.

But it wouldn’t surprise me if Dubya wins. Sometimes, over here, it seems unbelievable that anyone would vote for Bush. But there’s more to him that meets the trans-Atlantic eye. Right-wing cheerleader, but also presiding over a huge boost in public spending (and not just on anti-terrorism). And that old strategy of scaring a nation and then appearing to be the only one with the experience or strength to protect them seemed to be working over there – at least it did at that point. And Kerry didn’t seem to be rising to the occasion. Maybe his ratings will perk up as the convention hoo-ha dies down.

Now if Hillary was running…