Middle-class Americans are proud of their country and they are not. He thinks he's going to sit down with Iran and Hamas: how do you know he's not going to sit down with a suicide bomber? All he's going to do is raise taxes."

Stone, 56, was born in New York, half-Hungarian and half-Italian. He has moved to Miami for a year-round tan

and hardball politics with an old-fashioned anti-Communist streak. He works out as a bodybuilder, drinks vodka martinis, has more than 100 suits and sports a tattoo of Richard Nixon's scowling face between his shoulder blades. Richard Nixon, not Ronnie Reagan, is his political hero because he understood the politics of hate and division. "Hate is a stronger motivator than love," he says.

This belief inspired the campaign which destroyed the Democrat Michael Dukakis to give the White House to the first George Bush in 1988, and remains the yardstick for dirty politics. Stone attacked Dukakis for putting dangerous criminals back on the streets with a liberal prisoner furlough programme as Governor of Massachusetts. Stone's colleague Lee Atwater