VOTE ROBOTIC

Sure Jonathan Freedland learned a lot about global warming from An Inconvenient Truth but it's the non-envirnomental lessons that are really important. It was, for example, a mistake for Americans to vote for Bush just because he was more likeable than Gore. The British are urged not to make the same mistake:

Perhaps Britons should bear that in mind at our next election. If the choice is between David Cameron and Gordon Brown - and, given the events of last week, that is now a serious if - then polls will show, as they have already, Cameron ahead on the affability index. Brown, like Gore before him, will seem stiff, unnatural, oddly robotic, a creature of 24/7 politics, unable to speak fluent human. Cameron, like Bush, will be charming and easy. He won't make odd grimaces when he speaks.

But we should ask ourselves: is this any basis for choosing a leader? Surely we should choose the man of substance, no matter how he looks in a fleece or how breezily he can talk about his iPod. America made that mistake already and we are all paying the price. Let's not repeat it.

Voters are inclined to pick seemingly real people over oddly robotic snobby bores. Funny that.