Whatever happened to James Blake? He is probably the most famous bus driver ever. And yet when he died at age 89 in March 2002, the few papers that bothered to note his passing in an obituary ran just a few hundred words of wire copy and moved on.

Today is President's day a day when George Bush's record bears comparison with other former White House occupants. Bush would like to be compared to Truman. USA Today founder Al Neuharth has argued that Bush is beyond comparison.

Keech had received news of the impending deluge from Sananda, a being from the planet Clarion, whose messages she passed on to a small group of believers. Unbeknown to her, the group had been infiltrated by a University of Minnesota researcher, the social psychologist Leon Festinger.

The reluctance of state department officials to volunteer to serve in Iraq is the most explicit illustration yet of the gulf between the military and civilian experience of this war. It also undermines a central plant of the stated aims underpinning Bush's surge. The reason why the government is having trouble getting members of the diplomatic corps - particularly middle managers on up - to go to Iraq and help build democratic and civic institutions is not difficult to fathom: they don't want to die . No amount of incentives, danger money and so on seems to be able to woo them and they cannot be compelled. On personal, not to mention political grounds, I don't blame them.

"When he started, it was definitely a long shot," says a friend who was at the meeting. "Nobody there had any money. He's got this funny name. He's black. It wasn't even clear at that stage if he would even get the African-American vote."

Watching the contenders for the Democratic party nomination at the Washington Hilton this weekend during the party's winter meeting was to see Bruni's formula applied with precision (though he might have added: "Have millionaire backers, be tall, married and able-bodied" - it is unlikely the wheelchair user FDR would have been elected in the era of mass television).