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Rock star risk

Justin Webb | 23:21 UK time, Sunday, 24 August 2008

I see is picking up on our discussion of America's strength through diversity and renewal. He makes an interesting point about the occasional merits of the command approach. It's about the infrastructure (London 2012 is well aware of this) and the ability of advanced economies to renew and modernise it while maintaining fundamental freedoms - such as the freedom not to be over-taxed.

America does have an aversion to tax and a creaking infrastructure (anyone who comes here from Western Europe or the advanced bits of Asia notices that stuff doesn't work very well) which is one of the things Obama might fix, particularly if infrastructure investment becomes a way of keeping employment up in a recession.

As the sinks in, , and a grumpy elderly person complains to me that a 3am text message is hardly the sure-footed campaign management we witter on about. Au contraire: for one thing Obamaniacs are up all night - famously - and anyway in Hollywood it was only midnight (and in Berlin where many of his keenest fans live it was 8 or 9 in the morning).

I still think the Biden risk is that he will outshine the younger fellow - his speech later this week here in Denver (just arrived, hot and long queues) could be a real corker of focused genial knife twisting. Obama cannot do that. He may look even more like a rock star after the week - a rock star who has employed a politician to do his work for him.

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