The poll-driven nature of politics had imprisoned the political system in the US

Carl Bernstein, half of the legendary reporting team that uncovered the story of the Watergate break-in for The Washington Post, said the poll-driven nature of politics had imprisoned the political system in the US. In Australia to promote his book, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, a 640-page doorstopper he has worked on for seven years, Bernstein said he had interviewed about 200 people in the process. He declined to speculate on the likelihood that Hillary Clinton, now a New York senator, would end up as the Democratic Party's candidate in next year's presidential race - a prospect he said the Clinton campaign had been caught out trying to depict as inevitable.

The former first lady was obviously ahead in the polls - if not the poll in Iowa where the first Democratic Party primary will pit her against Barack Obama, her nearest rival. That contest has its own bitter irony for the Clinton campaign. When Bill Clinton was elected president 15 years ago he represented a change from the old political order. Now it is Senator Obama's turn, said Bernstein. "He's the young upstart with a new politics to some extent. She is someone with an older politics."