In June 1979 Jimmy Carter's pollster, Patrick Caddell, wrote the president a devastating memo. Inflation was at 11%. Unemployment, the price of oil and tension with Iran was rising. Caddell was anxious. "For the first time, we actually got numbers where people no longer believed that the future of America was going to be as good as it was now," he said. "And that really shook me, because it was so at odds with the American character."

As texts go it was devastating, arguably one of the most revealing pieces of evidence to emerge from the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking.

 

In a sermon, which would later serve as a title for Barack Obama's bestselling book, his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, described a painting called Hope by GF Watts. It depicted a bruised and battered woman who used the single string she had on her harp to make holy music. "To take the one string you have left and to have the audacity to hope," said Wright.

Reports of stratospheric turnout in Wisconsin's recall election on Tuesday boosted Democrat hopes of victory in the vote to topple Republican governor Scott Walker.

Eighteen months of acrimony that made Wisconsin a national political battleground climaxed on Tuesday as voters lined up from dawn to cast ballots in the recall election.

There is a degree of hyperbole one comes to expect from American activists around election time. Given the level of polarisation, this is hardly surprising. Every vote, you're told, is about liberty, justice, the American dream, the constitution or the world one wants to leave your children or grandchildren. Then, often, half the eligible voters stay at home and, regardless of who wins, not an awful lot changes.

Former president Bill Clinton came to Milwaukee this morning to mobilise voters campaigning to oust Wisconsin governor Scott Walker ahead of Tuesday's recall vote.