... system, quite distinctive from most parliamentary systems (Australia's Constitution with its governing Parliamentary Body and Senate as a genuine House of Review is something of a middle ground).

George W. Bush's abuses of the greatest concentration of Presidential power, as commander in chief of the armed forces, should not distract us from how much of the fight ahead will be fought out in the Congress. Indeed, despite winning re-election, much of George Bush's legislative programme went down in flame early in his second term.

One implication is that an essential political ploy for the Obama administration is to propose what sounds from the bully pulpit as perfectly reasonable policies, which are certain to provoke Republican obstructionism, so that Republican Obstructionism is a campaign issue in 2010. A first mid-term election like 1934 will establish conditions in which much can be accomplished in the 2011-2012 Congress ... a first midterm election like 1994 will be catastrophic.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.