Democrats in Denver
In one extraordinary passage [of his convention speech], Bill Clinton offered the way to a full reconciliation with Obama, writes Jonathan Freedland. Recalling his 1992 campaign, he said: "The Republicans said I was too young and too inexperienced to be Commander-in-Chief. Sound familiar?" He was declaring that Obama was like him, almost his political heir - and that may be the greatest endorsement of all. Barack Obama has great reason to be grateful to Bill Clinton today. He received both the backing of and a free tutorial from the man who was the best political campaigner in the second half of the 20th century. And after a vicious primary battle that had diminished his own stature, Bill Clinton also took a first, but large, stride towards restoring his own reputation. Jonathan Freedland Guardian Unlimited
Full article: The Big Dog can still hunt 
Clintons give up the fight as Obama gets his nomination
The maxim that "oppositions do not win elections; governments lose them" is not just a journalistic cliché, says Anatole Kaletsky. It is a profound statement about democracy. If the Republicans can get their candidate re-elected to the White House after all their failures of the past eight years - after the military misadventures, the geopolitical blunders, the economic mishaps and the mismanagement of natural disasters - America will be perilously close to the point when democracy ceases to perform its most essential function of disciplining political power. Accountability - not personality or rhetoric or colour or age or gender - should be the overriding issue in this election. The Democrats - with their naively high-minded focus on Mr Obama's alleged achievements instead of the Bush Administration's manifest blunders - do not yet seem to have understood this. Anatole Kaletsky The Times
Full article: Americans must give the Republicans a good kicking on November 4
In pictures: The Democrats in Denver
Michelle Obama spoke eloquently of her husband's desire to shift "the world as it is" towards "the world as it should be". But Washington's capacity to do that is far less than it was in the 1940s, or even in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was lucky enough to walk with history, writes Timothy Garton Ash. The domestic strengths of the US are also not what they were. In the ongoing credit crisis of turbo-capitalism, flagship American banks run to the sovereign wealth funds of the Middle East and east Asia for help. East bails out West. The American housing market teeters on the verge of collapse. Jobs are hard to find. Middle-class Americans slide out of healthcare and into poverty. While hundreds of billions of dollars have been squandered on war, anyone who spends time in the US can see how civil infrastructure is crumbling. Timothy Garton Ash The Guardian
Full article: The story's great, the rhetoric soars, but soon Obama must heed Canute
Edward Luttwak: Talk of American decline is premature
Russia and our own guilty men
Let us not forget our own guilty men: Tony Blair snuggling up to Vladimir Putin for nights at the opera in St Petersburg, safely distant from the howls echoing from the torture chambers of Chechnya, writes Edward Lucas. Nor our pinstriped fifth column: businessmen whose salivating pursuit of profits blinded them to the looming menace of Russia's authoritarian crony capitalism. And let us also blame the European leaders in Germany, Italy, France and elsewhere, crass and craven by turns, who have divided the continent and endangered our security. But we can still fight back. We should scrutinise the way in which Kremlin cronies use our banks to launder the billions they have stolen from the long-suffering people of Russia. We can tighten our visa rules so that Ukrainians find a warmer welcome, and Russians a colder one. Edward Lucas Daily Mail
Full article: Like any bully, Russia can be faced down. Let's do it sooner rather than later
Fashion's thin fixation
The predictable truth is that when it comes to skinny models, nothing has changed, says Hadley Freeman. Nothing. The belief in the industry remains that thinness is symbolic of wealth and aspiration. Thus the more luxurious the label, the thinner the models. Unfortunately, these luxurious labels tend to wield the most power in the industry because they make the most money: therefore they spend the most on advertising and so control the editors of the fashion magazines. These editors are, then, muzzled, and cannot admit that attending a fashion show these days is all too often like watching some shocking Panorama report about a war camp, with skeletal and purple-eyed eastern European women walking up and down runways aimlessly. Hadley Freeman The Guardian
Full article: Only the clotheshorses can buck fashion's thin fixation
Golden girl Kate Moss denies anorexia
