I’m not going to mock Norman Mailer by pretending I can write anything sufficiently meaningful, passionate or truthful to do him justice. Suffice to say that reading his books, I realised for the first time I could care as much about American literature as deeply as I did about American popular culture.

If you fancy a bit of bathos, you can read my cackhanded attempts to mimic the style of The Armies of the Night and Miami and the Siege of Chicago. But far better, I think, to enjoy a slice of the original. The below - scanned in, so apologies for any errors I’ve missed - comes from Mailer’s depiction of the astonishing events in and surrounding the Democratic Convention of 1968, when police employed what one Democratic delegate called “gestapo tactics” against anti-war protesters in the streets (Chicago’s mayor, corrupt Democratic machine politician par excellence - and the father of its current mayor - responded by loudly suggesting to said delegate, across the convention floor and visibly on television, that he should fuck himself). Here Mailer describes the last night of the convention.

*

Shortly after convening, the convention showed a movie thirty-two minutes long, entitled ‘Robert Kennedy Remembered’, and while it went on, through the hall, over the floor, and out across the country on television, a kind of unity came over everyone who was watching, at least for a little while. Idealism rarely moved politicians - it had too little to do with property. But emotion did. It was closer to the land. Somewhere between sorrow and the blind sword of patriotism was the fulcrum of reasonable politics, and as the film progressed, and one saw scene after scene of Bobby Kennedy growing older, a kind of happiness came back from the image, for something in his face grew young over the years - he looked more like a boy on the day of his death, a nice boy, nicer than the kid with the sharp rocky glint in his eye who had gone to work for Joe McCarthy in his early twenties, and had then known everything there was to know about getting ahead in politics. He had grown modest as he grew older, and his wit had grown with him - he had become a funny man as the picture took care to show, wry, simple for one instant, shy and off to the side on the next, but with a sort of marvelous boy’s wisdom, as if he knew the world was very bad and knew the intimate style of how it was bad, as only boys can sometimes know (for they feel it in their parents and their schoolteachers and their friends). Yet he had confidence he was going to fix it - the picture had this sweet simple view of him which no one could resent for somehow it was not untrue. Since his brother’s death, a subtle sadness had come to live in his tone of confidence, as though he were confident he would win - if he did not lose. That could also happen, and that could happen quickly. He had come into that world where people live with the recognition of tragedy, and so are often afraid of happiness, for they know that one is never in so much danger as when victorious and/or happy - that is when the devils seem to have their hour, and hawks seize something living from the gambol on the field.

The reporter met Bobby Kennedy just once. It was on an afternoon in May in New York just after his victory in the Indiana primary and it had not been a famous meeting, even if it began well. The Senator came in from a conference (for the reporter was being granted an audience) and said quickly with a grin, ‘Mr Mailer, you’re a mean man with a word.’ He had answered, ‘On the contrary, Senator, I like to think of myself as a gracious writer.’

‘Oh,’ said Senator Kennedy, with a wave of his hand, ‘that too, that too!’

So it had begun well enough, and the reporter had been taken with Kennedy’s appearance. He was slimmer even than one would have thought, not strong, not weak, somewhere between a blade of grass and a blade of steel, fine, finely drawn, finely honed, a fine flush of color in his cheeks, two very white front teeth, prominent as the two upper teeth of a rabbit, so his mouth had no hint of the cruelty or calculation of a politician who weighs counties, cities, and states, but was rather a mouth ready to nip at anything which attracted its contempt or endangered its ideas. Then there were his eyes. They were most unusual. His brother Teddy Kennedy spoke of those who ‘followed him, honored him, lived in his mild and magnificent eyes’, and that was fair description for he had very large blue eyes, the iris wide in diameter, near to twice the width of the average eye, and the blue was a milky blue like a marble so that his eyes, while prominent, did not show the separate steps and slopes of light some bright eyes show, but rather were gentle, indeed beautiful - one was tempted to speak of velvety eyes - their surface seemed made of velvet as if one could touch them, and the surface would not be repelled.

He was as attractive as a movie star. Not attractive like his brother had been, for Jack Kennedy had looked like the sort of vital leading man who would steal the girl from Ronald Reagan every time, no, Bobbie Kennedy had looked more like a phenomenon of a movie star - he could have filled some magical empty space between Mickey Rooney and James Dean, they would have cast him sooner or later in some remake of Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and everyone would have said, ‘Impossible casting! He’s too young.’ And he was too young. Too young for Senator, too young for President, it felt strange in his presence thinking of him as President, as if the country would be giddy, like the whirl of one’s stomach in the drop of an elevator or jokes about an adolescent falling in love, it was incredible to think of him as President, and yet marvelous, as if only a marvelous country would finally dare to have him.

That was the best of the meeting - meeting him! The reporter spent the rest of his valuable thirty minutes arguing with the Senator about Senator McCarthy. He begged him to arrange some sort of truce or liaison, but made a large mistake from the outset. He went on in a fatuous voice, sensing error too late to pull back, about how effective two Irish Catholics would be on the same ticket for if there were conservative Irishmen who could vote against one of them, where was the Irish Catholic in America who could vote against two? and Kennedy had looked at him with disgust, as if offended by the presumption in this calculation, his upper lip had come down severely over his two front white teeth, and he had snapped, ‘I don’t want those votes.’ How indeed did the reporter presume to tell him stories about the benightedness of such people when he knew them only too well. So the joke had been a lame joke and worse, and they got into a dull argument about McCarthy, Kennedy having little which was good to say, and the reporter arguing doggedly in the face of such remarks as: ‘He doesn’t even begin to campaign until twelve.’

They got nowhere. Kennedy’s mind was altogether political on this afternoon. It did not deal with ideas except insofar as ideas were attached to the name of bills, or speeches, or platforms, or specific debates in specific places, and the reporter, always hard put to remember such details, was forced therefore to hammer harder and harder on the virtues of McCarthy’s gamble in entering the New Hampshire primary until Kennedy said, ‘I wonder why you don’t support Senator McCarthy. He seems more like your sort of guy, Mr Mailer,’ and in answer, oddly moved, he had said in a husky voice, ‘No, I’m supporting you. I know it wasn’t easy for you to go in.’ And even began to mutter a few remarks about how he understood that powerful politicians would not have trusted Kennedy if he had moved too quickly, for his holding was large, and men with large holdings were not supportable if they leaped too soon. ‘I know that,’ he said looking into the Senator’s mild and magnificent eye, and Kennedy nodded, and in return a little later Kennedy sighed, and exhaled his breath, looked sad for an instant, and said, ‘Who knows? Who knows? perhaps I should have gone in earlier.’ A few minutes later they said good-bye, not unpleasantly. That was the last he saw of him.

The closest he was to come again was to stand in vigil for fifteen minutes as a member of the honor guard about his coffin in St Patrick’s. Lines filed by. People had waited in line for hours, five hours, six hours, more, inching forward through the day and through the police lines on the street in order to take one last look at the closed coffin.

The poorest part of the working class of New York had turned out, poor Negro men and women, Puerto Ricans, Irish washerwomen, old Jewish ladies who looked like they ran grubby little newsstands, children, adolescents, families, men with hands thick and lined and horny as oyster shells, calluses like barnacles, came filing by to bob a look at that coffin covered by a flag. Some women walked by praying, and knelt and touched the coffin with their fingertips as they passed, and after a time the flag would slip from the pressure of their fingers and an usher detailed for the purpose would readjust it. The straightest line between two points is the truth of an event, no matter how long it takes or far it winds, and if it had taken these poor people six hours of waiting in line to reach that coffin, then the truth was in the hours. A river of workingclass people came down to march past Kennedy’s coffin, and this endless line of people had really loved him, loved Bobby Kennedy like no political figure in years had been loved.

The organ played somewhere in the nave and the line moved forward under the vast - this day - tragic vaults of the cathedral so high overhead and he felt love for the figure in the coffin and tragedy for the nation in the years ahead, the future of the nature seemed as dark and tortured, as wrenched out of shape, as the contorted blood-spattered painted sculpture of that garish Christ one could find in every dark little Mexican church. The horror of dried blood was now part of the air, and became part Of the air of the funeral next day. That funeral was not nearly so beautiful; the poor people who had waited in line on Friday were now gone, and the mighty were in their place, the President and members of the Congress, and the Establishment, and the Secret Service, and the power of Wall Street; the inside of St Patrick’s for the length of the service was dank with the breath of the over-ambitious offering reverence - there is no gloom so deep unless it is the scent of the upholstery in a mortician’s limousine, or the smell of morning in a closed Pullman after executives have talked through the night.

The movie came to an end. Even dead, and on film, he was better and more moving than anything which had happened in their convention, and people were crying. An ovation began. Delegates came to their feet, and applauded an empty screen - it was as if the center of American life was now passing the age where it could still look forward; now people looked back into memory, into the past of the nation - was that possible? They applauded the presence of a memory. Bobby Kennedy had now become a beloved property of the party.

Minutes went by and the ovation continued. People stood on their chairs and clapped their hands. Cries broke out. Signs were lifted. Small hand-lettered signs which said, ‘Bobby, Be With Us’, and one enormous sign eight feet high, sorrowful as rue in the throat -’Bobby, We Miss You,’ it said.

Now the ovation had gone on long enough - for certain people. So signals went back and forth between floor and podium and phone, and Carl Albert stepped forward and banged the gavel for the ovation to end, and asked for order. The party which had come together for five minutes, after five days and five months and five years of festering discord, was now immediately divided again. The New York and California delegations began to sing the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’, and the floor heard, and delegations everywhere began to sing. Humphrey delegations as quick as the rest. In every convention there is a steamroller, and a moment when the flattened exhale their steam, and ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!’ was the cry of the oppressed at this convention, even those unwittingly oppressed in their mind, and not even knowing it in their heart until this instant, now they were defying the Chair, clapping their hands, singing, stamping their feet to mock the chairman’s gavel.

Carl Albert brought up Dorothy Bush to read an appreciation the convention would offer for the work of certain delegates. The convention did not wish to hear. Mrs Bush began to read in a thin mean voice, quivering with the hatreds of an occasion like this, and the crowd sang on, ‘Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, his truth goes marching on,’ and they stamped their feet and clapped their hands, and were loose finally and having their day as they sang the song which once, originally, had commemorated a man who preached civil disorder, then mutiny, and attacked a fort in his madness and was killed, John Brown was also being celebrated here, and the Texas and Illinois delegations were now silent, clapping no longer, sitting on their seats, looking bored. Every delegate on the floor who had hated the Kennedys was now looking bored, and the ones who had loved them were now noisier than ever. Once again the party was polarized. Signs waved all over the floor, ‘Bobby, We’ll Remember you’, ‘Bobby, We’ll Seek Your Newer World’, and the ever-present, ‘Bobby, We Miss You’. Yes they did, missed him as the loving spirit, the tender germ in the living plasma of the party. Nothing was going to make them stop; this offering of applause in the oratorical vitamin pills Hubert would yet be there to offer. The demonstration went on for twenty minutes and gave no sign of stopping at all. Dorothy Bush had long ago given up. Carl Albert, even smaller than Georgie Wallace, was now as furious as only a tiny man can be when his hard earned authority has turned to wax -he glared across the floor at the New York delegation like a little boy who smells something bad.

However did they stop the demonstration? Well, convention mechanics can be as perfect as the muscle in a good play when professionals have worked their football for a season. Mayor Daley, old lover of the Kennedys, and politically still enough of an enigma six months ago for Bobby to have said in his bloodwise political wisdom, ‘Daley is the ballgame,’ Mayor Daley, still (lining with the Kennedys these last three days in his desire for Teddy as Vice President, now had come to the end of his political string, and like a good politician he pulled it. He gave the signal. The gallery began to chant, ‘We love Daley.’ All his goons and clerks and beef-eaters and healthy parochial school students began to yell and scream and clap, ‘We love Daley’, and the power of their lungs, the power of the freshest and the largest force in this Amphitheatre soon drowned out the Kennedy demonstrators, stuffed their larynxes with larger sound. The Daley demonstration was bona fide too - his people had suffered with their Mayor, so they screamed for him now and clapped their hands, and Mayor Daley clapped his hands too for he also loved Mayor Daley. Simple narcissism gives the power of beasts to politicians, professional wrestlers and female movie stars.

At the height of the Daley demonstration, it was abruptly cut off. By a signal. ‘Shut your yaps’ was an old button, no matter how the signal came. In the momentary silence, Carl Albert got his tongue in, and put Ralph Metcalfe (Daley’s Black man) who was up on the podium already, into voice on the mike, and Metcalfe announced five minutes of silence for the memory of Martin Luther King. So New York and California were naturally obliged to be silent with the rest, the floor was silent, the gallery was silent, and before those minutes began to be up, Carl Albert had slipped Dorothy Rush in again, and she was reading the appreciation of the convention for certain delegates. Business had been resumed. The last night proceeded.

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And as soon as I realised this I realised just how weird all of flying is. The meals - not bad, just not real, with curry and rolls and dessert all carefully sealed in plastic. The hyper-clear cups, cleaner and more pleasing to eye than any glass, so your eye is drawn to every movement of the water inside - and which go in the bin as soon as you’re finished. Pillows and blankets - some of the most natural, comforting, emotionally resonant things - served in plastic bags. Everything seeming normal, like normal life, but smaller, neater, more packaged, and just not the same. And then you realise your whole world right now is a smaller, neater, packaged world, because it’s been squeezed into a large metal tube. And the reason it’s all so crafted to look like the outside world is to draw your attention away from the fact that you are thousands and thousands of feet up in the air. And, of course, just one mechanical failure away from a violent death.

This realisation prompted vague panic. They say that sometimes veteran flyers, businessmen in their forties, have a sudden realisation of how basically bonkers flight is, have a panic attack, and never fly again. On the way over, I’d felt a distinct unease, but I put that down to worrying that, having had a mild security-queueing nightmare at Gatwick, I’d been unable to get any dollars, and although I knew I ought to be able to withdraw some from my UK card at any ATM, if I couldn’t, I’d be stranded at Newark (in the end, of course, it was fine). This time, I had no excuse - I was going home, I had a few quid and money in my account (well, money standing between me and my overdraft limit, which is the modern equivalent), and I’d had lovely views of New York on the way out. Yet I still felt a distinct unease.

So, of course, mother nature picked that moment to send us through an hour of turbulence.

Curled up against the closed window, trying to get to sleep and ignore the bumping, I let my mind wander. Not a good idea. The following is an attempted transcript of just some of the dribble that rushed through my travel-overloaded, sleep-deprived brain:

I’m thirsty. There’s a hostess; ask for some water. Oh, no, I shouldn’t bother her. Why not, you idiot? You’re thirsty, they’ll bring water. It’s their job. I don’t want to be any trouble, I’m sure they’ll bring the trolley round soon anyway. You’re paying four hundred pounds to sit in this damn tube for seven hours! Ask for water! (I didn’t.) The guy next to me (American, 18 maybe, with a baseball cap and small eyes) looks bored. Maybe I should talk to him? Nah, I don’t want to, I want to sleep. But do I really not want to, or am I just scared to, like I’m scared to ask for water? Am I scared of strangers? Why am I so scared of strangers? (Eventually he spoke to me, asking if I had a pen for the visa form. I didn’t. We also sort of grunted at each other when he came back from the toilet, and I got up to go and he let me past). Is my inability to talk to strangers the reason my career isn’t going anywhere? Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Your career isn’t going nowhere, you’re only 26. And besides, you can talk to strangers when necessary, you’re not some cocktail-party-phobic. You’re good with strangers. Just not when there’s no need, not idle chatter. Maybe I should be a standup comedian (yes, I really thought this). All this insecure-internal-monologue stuff is actually quite funny. I could have a whole routine about how I’m smart but I’m not getting anywhere in life because I won’t ask airline hostesses for water. Don’t be ridiculous, that wouldn’t work. There are no actual jokes - that’s mildly amusing banter, not actual comedy. It’s like your stories - usually vaguely amusing in the telling, but always without a proper punch line. You’d be just another Woody-Allen-without-jokes, vaguely amusing guy with insecurities. Now stop being late-night-ridiculous and go to sleep. Oh, look, here’s the breakfast croissant. A perfect opportunity to ask for water and put all this to rest. Can I have some water, please? Oh, they’re coming with the drinks trolley, great. Here it comes. Mmm, I’d like some orange juice. But I want water as well. Can I ask for both? No, don’t be greedy, just have orange. But I’m paying four hundred pounds to sit in this metal tube!

Somewhere along the line, I got a couple of hours’ sleep. But it was fitful, and interrupted by cycles of too-many-American-sitcoms pop-psych like that above. Then a funny thing happened - although, coming after all that, it doesn’t seem that funny at all. I looked out the window, and for once I didn’t see a blanket of clouds. Instead there was a dark mass of sea, extending out to the horizon and blending imperceptibly into the sky. The sun wasn’t rising ahead of us yet, but colour was beginning to appear outside the window, turning the sea that had seemed pitch black an hour or two ago a rich blue. And down on the surface, a tiny prick of light was shining. Around it, I could just make out the outline of a ocean liner. I realised that, all the way down there on the surface, aboard that tiny speck on the sea, a few hundred people were having all the same late-night fears. People just like, me, just like my surly American teenage neighbour, even just like the hostesses. Some sleeping, some dreaming, some just up worrying. With days or weeks, not hours, till their destination. And a wave of calm washed over me. I don’t know why - hey, maybe it was just the sugar rush from the orange juice - but I just had this incredibly strong sensation that we’re all the same - humanity, spread across the whole planet and constantly looking for new ways to traverse it, all just trying to get somewhere. The whole story of civilisation seemed to glow inside me, warming me. The ancient Chinese and their rockets, Galileo and his telescope, the tears of the designer of the Titanic. Working as individuals, as separate nations and cultures, we’d conquered the sea, the sky, and space, and now we are more connected than ever before. Surely, working together, there was no problem - climate change, poverty, conflict - we couldn’t overcome?

Not exactly philosophy, of course. And unlike a previous, similar revelation I once had - which I can think back to anytime I see a tree - it’s hard to base a life-philosophy on the fact that “from a distance, there is harmony” (and hey, someone tried). Indeed, it seems entirely logical that, if planes are designed to represent a sanitised and packaged mini-version of the world outside, then the impression of the world outside you get from the window is going to be sanitised and conflict-free too. Nevertheless, I remember that cruise ship very fondly. It got me through quite an odd night. Eventually, of course, we got home. And it was raining, and I got the train and the tube into London and went straight to work. So my good mood really should have evaporated. But that little ship kept me quite chirpy, all the way through till I collapsed into bed that night.

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So here are plenty

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See the little, uber-historic State House in the middle?

Cambridge is famed for the redbrick of Harvard and for suburban wooden houses, but it does stray into European modernism in places, at least in the dark:

In fact, you have to go to Jamaica Plain to see the famed New England wooden house take on a more colourful life:

But for all its wealth, Boston has its fair share of dereliction:

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The background

In the first and only statewide televised debate between the three candidates for the democratic nomination for the election of the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachussetts, State Attorney General Tom Reilly faced off with venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli and lawyer Deval Patrick. The debate was the first major hurdle on the race to the “corner house” - what passes in Massachusetts for a Governor’s mansion. The primary on Sept. 19 will see all registered Democrats and Independents - amounting to over 80% of the state’s 4 million-strong electorate - eligible to select the Democratic Candidate aiming to defeat Kerry Healey, the current Lt. Governor and Republican candidate.

The players

Tom Reilly: The son of Irish immigrants and a traditional player in Boston’s political machine, his eight years as attorney general have been marked by tough talk and some tough action on clearing up the mess left behind by the overspending and delays on Boston’s mammoth transit project, the “Big Dig.” Seen as an unopposed shoe-in for over a year, Reilly has slipped into third place since Gabrieli and Patrick entered the race, but retains heavy union support.

Chris Gabrieli: The child of Hungarian immigrants, Gabrieli’s high-achieving business career and centrist instincts make him similar to many liberal Republicans, such as New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg. After heading up a clutch of state and Boston committees and running for Lt. Governor in 2002 and declining the same place on Reilly’s ticket this year, he’s attracted criticism for running a largely self-funded campaign.

Deval Patrick: Painted as the election’s Howard Dean for his grassroots-focussed campaign and oppostion to tax cuts proposed by his opponents, Patrick has countered by playing up his corporate experience since winning the surprise endorsement of the state Democratic Attempting to become the nation’s first black governor, Patrick is ironically the only candidate not born of immigrant parents.

The buildup

6.35pm: Outside the JFK School, and it’s round one to Gabrieli - row after row of supporters on both sides of the road. There’s a strong Reilly element, with a few union signs. And there’s a disappointing Patrick turnout. The rich venture capitalist, whose campaign has been portrayed as a rich man’s folly, beating the pants off the grassroots activist challenging “business as usual.” 6.50pm: You don’t have to be a Harvard-basher (and there are as many around tonight as ever) to wonder if the JFK Jr Forum is the best possible location for this. Despite having blagged a coveted white first-floor ticket, I find myself herded upstairs and ultimately sitting directly above the candidates’ podium - facing out. If I lean over and strain, I can see the tops of their heads. I opt to gawp at the TV screen instead.

The debate part one: press questions

7.00pm: Our host this evening is former New Hampshire Governor and Director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics, Jeanne Shaheen. She has slightly scary eyes.

7.02pm: In this section of the debate reporters ask the questions, the aim being to address candidate-specific issues. The first is one of many that will concern a proposed cut in state income tax, which Reilly and Gabrieli support and Patrick opposes, albeit with a certain amount of fudging. All the usual tax red-flags are there - which services will you cut if you do it? Which businesses will leave the state if you don’t? So, what kind of cut are we talking about here - 10%? 5%? Well, no. This is America. The cut at stake is one of 0.3%, from a mind-bogglingly low 5.3% to a similarly-low 5%. OK, so there are federal income taxes too, but still, this is all pointlessly symbolic stuff. Patrick is quite effective in rebutting the label of tax-n-spend, painting the other candidates as promoting plans whose numbers don’t add up.

7.04pm: I’ve only just noticed that the candidates are, rather unfortunately, arranged in descending order of height. Gabrieli is a big man by any standard, and dominates the podium alongside the diminutive Reilly and even-more-so Patrick. There’s presumably some system for deciding the order fairly, but it certainly doesn’t do Patrick any favours.

7.06pm: Woah: things are getting nasty, early. Reilly’s making accusing noises towards Gabrieli about some sort of invasion of privacy… what’s going on? (Update: it tunrns out Reilly’s previous running mate dropped out of the race after just one day because of financial issues. This morning’s Globe carried a story that Reilly knew about it before putting her on the ticket. Reilly was accusing Gabrieli’s campaign manager of leaking the story; he later explained he meant a friend of both Gabrieli and the former running mate, who denies it. In short, Reilly figured the best defense is a good offense.)

7.08pm: Patrick’s, interestingly, responding to the immediate bickering between Reilly and Gabrieli with jokes. “Are we still talking about tax?” he’s asked, distancing himself from the spat.

7.09pm: A lady with a big, scary-looking camera is cuddling up next to us. Is she snapping my fellow booth-occupants - a bunch of young, earnest Deval Patrick supporters, and a slighly scary-looking guy in a suit and a Gabrieli badge - or the screen we’re watching? Who knows, but following my limited success at snazzy photography, it’s a relief to see the professionals have much, much bigger and better cameras than me. Yeah, that’s the difference.

7.11pm: Patrick’s main task tonight is to show that, in addition to his noted knack for soaring rhetoric, he has a grasp on the facts and numbers. So far, so good: in response to an intended squirmer on how he’ll pay for his spending programs, he hits back with an immediate, confident-sounding stat - mentioning a $735,000 savings plan. Now, I haven’t seen the plan, and it could be pie in the sky for all I know. But it sounds authoratitive, and it bats the sense that he’s not numerate well out of the park (as an experiment, I one day plan to spend a week of my life speaking only in American sporting metaphors).

7.12pm: What’s that on Patrick’s wrist? A burgundy plastic wristband. Hmm; not cancer, African poverty, the environment, bringing the troops home; what could it be? It’s an interesting thing to wear, anyway, and it takes the attention off his disgusting tie. Actually, it’s nul points all round on the tie front. (Update: a Google search suggests a purple wristband could be against animal cruelty, for Lupus awareness, or against domestic violence. None of which seems especially apposite.)

7.14pm: As if the glaring physical differences between the candidates weren’t enough, their voices match. Reilly’s small stature is accompanied by an irritating whine, and Patrick, too, is pretty high-pitched. Gabrieli’s tone is booming, gently accented, and pretty attractive. However, as any voice coach knows, it’s the way you use it. Reilly’s umming-and-aahing just amplifies his voice’s weakness, and his more aggressive moments - like his attack on Gabrieli - sound weak. Gabrieli’s tone is too consistent and generally too jovial - frankly, he doesn’t seem too much like he’s taking it seriously. Patrick’s speech has that sing-song quality all the best black orators have, and his generally well-spoken accent drops in moments of street-speak - a soft “t” here and there - that humanize him (and, I suspect, are intended to show black supporters that he hasn’t forgotten his tenement roots).

7.15pm: Patrick’s first real stumble. He’s asked, again in response to his spending plans, whether there’s any constituency he’s said no to. Patrick’s answer is a strong one - his plans for public service pay are well less than many unions wanted - but he’s visibly uncomfortable with the potentially base-alienating territory.

7.18pm: Gabrieli’s been challenged on his high personal expenditure on his campaign and refusal to take public funds or publish his accounts. He neatly spins the question into an opportunity to present himself as the striving entrepeneur, admitting to having invested “significant personal resources” into the race. Nice choice of words: we’re not talking extension-to-the-summer-house resources here. Not even remortgage-the-home-to-open-a-sandwich-shop resources. We’re talking about, at the last count, seven million dollars - the most spent on a Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign.

7.19pm: Reilly’s taking a strangely aggressive kick, and has repeatedly emphasised his man-o’-the-people credentials, calling Patrick and Gabrieli “on the side of big business.” But his fightin’ talk is undermined by his seeming increasingly out-of-sorts and lacking in confidence. He’s just finished a would-be powerful assertion of his commitment to fight for ordinary people. Very nice. But then a moment of eye contact with the camera showed the fear of god in his eyes.

7.20pm: If Reilly’s schtick is anger, Patrick’s seems to be humour. “We have 20,000 donors, Chris Gabrieli has one.” Nice. Fell a little flat, though, strangely - Patrick’s not too comfortable playing the attacking role.

7.22pm: Reilly’s really on the defensive over the Big Dig and he’s using strong words: “I’m the only one who stepped in and dealt with it;” “Justice will be served.” But it’s just not working: he doesn’t sound like his heart’s in it and the moral tone is out of place. Patrick and Gabrieli are calling the Big Dig a mess, not a crime. Reilly’s establishing his intentions neatly, but not doing his competence ratings any favours.

7.22pm: The key to debates such as this is to meld the attack and the proposal, to take something that enables you to score points over your opponent, and use the opportunity to also increase your own impression of new ideas. Patrick’s already done it, neatly summarising the nub of the Reilly’s-running-mate finance issue and moving the debate on. Now it’s Gabrieli’s turn - out of the bog-standard namecalling about the Big Dig, he scores a strong point on Reilly by pointing out that the state’s whistleblowing laws are under-used - then picks up the positive marks by suggesting a specific strengthening, namely lengthening the job protection provision from six months to a year. I’m not sure how original this is, but it’s clever, big-picture stuff.

7.24pm: Reilly’s giving us misstep after misstep. “I wrote that law, OK?” he throws at Gabrieli on the whistleblower issue. It should be an effective reminder that he’s the only candidate with substantive local experience. Instead, it sounds like a whining kid - “hey, that was my idea!” And given that Gabrieli’s just suggested the law’s not strong enough, simply taking the credit for it - however fairly - isn’t nearly enough. And without wanting to Reilly-bash, he’s also taking lots of potshots at Mitt Romney, which is to miss the point of the evening somewhat.

7.25pm: “I don’t think the people care though whether the next governor of Massachusetts is a Democrat or a Republican. I think they care that it’s someone that can do the job.” This sort of talk enhances Gabrieli’s New Democrat credentials, of course, but it’s still a jarring reminder of how different things are here in the US. No sane Labour politician would say something so blatantly centrist now in the UK. Indeed, it’s hard not to feel Gabrieli is sailing against the wind - as the Lieberman revolt shows, the democrat base has its spine back for hte first time in years. It’s not the only thing about Gabrieli’s campaign that has a whiff of the 1990’s, pre-9/11 period to it. It’s all very technocratic, very numbers, very PowerPoint - exactly the kind of politics that failed for Gore in 2000, and which has all but vanished since.

The debate part two: freeform discussion

7.26pm: OK, now the gloves are off and the fun begins. The press questions are over, and now we’re moving into a “freeform” section with questions coming from moderator Shaheen. Things have been pretty freeform already, with Shaheen having to work around Reilly’s creative approach to questions-answering. So this should be good.

7.26pm: Or not, given that the first question is a dullsville about keeping businesses in Massachusetts…

7.28pm:…which has turned out quite entertaining. We’ve just been treated to Reilly informing us he wants to “identify the companies that are in Massachusetts, and help them.” Help them how? Well, he went down to New York (eh?) to ask a firm how to help them expand their Massachuestts operations. “They told me different things- permitting and all that,” apparently.

7.29pm: You’ve got to hand it to Patrick’s briefing team - he’s clearly picking from a veritable arsenal of pre-researched examples. This time it’s a company called Evergreen, who are now manufacturing in Mexico. Does somebody, somewhere, check these companies, Iraq war mothers, excellent local public schools, and so on, the long list of exemplars thrust into the spotlight to add some reality to political speeches, actually exist?

7.30pm: Patrick’s really taken the bait and mounted a strong attack on Reilly’s anti-business stance. It’s a calculated risk for the grassrootser, but demonstrating he’s economically safe is a key goal for tonight for Patrick. It’s becoming clear that, by offering a caricature of the traditional business-bashing democrat machine politican, Reilly is simply making it easier for Patrick to dodge the Dukakis tag.

7.32pm: The business question has become the longest powwow of the evening. It’s moved on to stem cell research. Anywhere else in America, the issue at stake would be whether the research should even happen. But, mercifully, this is Massachusetts, and the bone of contention is how much the state should fund research, and who they should give it to. Reilly’s suggested, fairly ridiculously, that all state funding for the research should go to UMass, apparently because they’ve got some pretty good laboratories. Gabrieli has predictably snorted at this. But now Gabrieli and Patrick are going on about how they disagree on this - as if on everything else they were the best of pals. And yet it’s not clear what the dispute is. Gabrieli appears to be suggesting a competitive tender process for state research funds. Not a massive shock. Patrick’s claiming to disagree, and is using the issue as a chance to promote general better funding for public higher education in the state. But surely Patrick’s not suggesting funding be limited to public universities too? A minute later, and both Patrick and Gabrieli seem to be saying they both want to fund UMass and Harvard and want everyone to work together. (Update: by the weekend, Patrick’s post-debate email suggests Gabrieli was specifically excluding public universities from the funding, and is indeed suggesting limiting state funding to the public sector. In which case, he deserves applause for managing to appear significantly more moderate on Thursday than Reilly, despite having the same positon; and opprobium for misrepresenting Gabrieli’s position in the email.)

7.36pm: Gabrieli is not the kind of person to show when he’s nervous. But he does appear to be feeling the pressure - he’s suddenly talking too fast. 7.40pm: Fairly lame discussion about the implementation of the state’s radical new healthcare plan. Again, the differences between Patrick and Gabrieli are less striking than their shared vagueness. Increasingly, the real entertainment in this debate is just coming from watching Tom Reilly struggle. “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do [about healthcare],” he says. “Six years ago…” - not a good start. When Sheehan repeats the question, calling for the short-term implementation plan, Reilly’s response, incredibly, is: “I’m not raising taxes.” Really? Is that because your platform includes a commitment to a near-immediate tax cut? Very helpful. Very informative.

7.42pm: Patrick has been acused of vagueness, but he gains credibility for a sheer confidence Reilly lacks. His healthcare response - educating doctors on smarter drug buying - is less credible even than Reilly’s, but when Sheehan hits back and calls these long-term solutions, he hits back hat he wants action “in six months to a year.” And, bingo, the impression of a detailed timetable is given, when really i’m 80% he plucked that out of the air.

7.45pm: On perhaps the trickiest question for him - his leadership credentials - Patrick brings out another well-prepared response. Leading an investigation into bombings of black churches and synagogues in the South may not sound that exciting - compared, for example, to Romney’s electoral success on the back of “saving the Olympics.” But when the question explicitly references crises such as 9/11 - and the investigation in question happens to be the largest criminal investigation in the US before 9/11 - you’ve suddenly got a powerful response. It’s ironic that, for all his grassroots, not-politics-as-usual image, Patrick is probably the most skilled, polished political performer on the podium. Of course, the best polish brings out the shine underneath, rather than just covering up the dirt. Let’s hope it’s that way here.

7.48pm: Another stumble from Reilly. This question should be a gift for him - he’s got more government experience than the other two put together. He’s saying all the right things - reminding us that he was in office on Sep. 11, that he took immediate decisions, got the investigation started at Boston’s airport, etc. But it’s just all really shaky. He stumbled over saying “when the plane hit the second tower.” This is not the kind of thing you want to stumble on, Tom! If you can’t remember which was North and which was South, just say “when the planes hit the towers,” like everyone else does.

The debate part three: closing statements

7.50pm: Closing statements! Patrick first. It’s a little rehearsed - stock website stuff about leadership - but he gets into his groove at the end, again when he ditches the slick image for more tenement-speak. “If you want the same old same old, same old, the politics of money and connections, I’m not your guy,” he explains.

7.51pm: Reilly’s business-bashing tack clearly hasn’t been off-the-cuff tonight. It’s there, clear as day, in a wierdly populist closer. Did a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts - a state with an economy heavily dependent on tech industries and life sciences - really say he’s going to “take on the big corporations who cheat and exploit you?” Geez. This is the old leftie problem - can’t go from underdog to leader, from fighting to governing. From Republicans this fight-the-power stuff is remarkably effective, but surely from Decocrats it just sounds scary? Patrick said the same thing, but by taking aim at the stereotypical fat legislator, and not business, made it sound more local and less ideological.

7.52pm: This is Gabrieli’s chance to really put his personality forward - show himself to be something other than a Kissinger-style amoral brainbox. Predictably, he doesn’t. It’s all lovely, detailed stuff - outlining his experience, his plans, solid stuff - but by god is it dull. Gabrieli just hasn’t learned the difference between position papers and speeches - and between management and politics. And he stumbled his punchline! “It’s not about who has the best ideas,” he droned. Eh? Oh, you mean it’s not about “er - which party has the best ideas.” It is about who has the best ideas. Glad that’s clear. Seriously, Chris, the closing statement is one thing you’re not supposed to muck up. You could have practised it in the mirror while shaving.

7.55pm. And that’s it. You know the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 where radio listeners thought it was a tie, and TV viewers gave it to JFK? Well, it’s a similar story here. Reilly seems to have died on his feet, but I’m sure that came across much less on radio. By contrast, I bet, robbed of his physical presence, Gabrieli seems even more boring. Judging purely on debate performance rather than policy detail (who watches a debate for that?), I’d say Patrick seemed to offer just enough detail and knowledge, and plenty of vision, leaving him the winner.

Read the full debate transcript

The aftermath

The next day’s press generally calls it narrowly for Patrick, although Gabrieli is also praised, and the main story is Reilly’s slow death. The Herald, however, goes all-out for Reilly, declaring, incredibly, that his opening attack on Gabrieli “ripped his throat out.” Hmm.

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