If White House hopefuls were judged by the number of midterm election events they attended in the last few weeks, then the Democratic party’s presidential candidate for 2008 would be Bill Clinton. His running mate would be Barack Obama, the first-term senator from Illinois whose star power has exploded on to the American political scene.

No one – including John McCain, the senator from Arizona, who leads the field of Republican aspirants – could match the drawing power of the former president from Arkansas, and the 45-year-old Mr Obama who launched a book of canny political musings called The Audacity of Hope during the mid-term campaign.