A recent television programme about spin doctors in US politics showed a fascinating glimpse into the shallowness of the whole business.
The programme eavesdropped on the off screen words of wisdom being given to the likes of Bush, Clinton, Al Gore and Pat Robertson. Nearly all the advice centred around how not to answer the question being put to you. So for instance Gore was struggling desperately one minute with his erratic record on the abortion issue, then after sotto voce advice suddenly began heading off into the great blue yonder with a vision of a better world under the Democrats.
That such tactics work, though, owes much to the fact that many of the US's top and supposedly most ruthless interrogators have a very cosy and ingratiating relationship with the politicians they are meant to be undermining. This, as much as, if not more than, the skill of some US Peter Mandelson, explains why the whole process works. For I can think of no other form of activity where you could get away with so blatantly ignoring the question you were asked.
At school I cannot remember one teacher who would have accepted in answer to the question, `In what year did the Wars of the Roses begin?' a monologue on the virtues of gooseberries. No cop who asks you if you have been drinking and driving would find your thoughts on the works of George and Ira Gershwin the least bit interesting, nor would they forget to breathalyse you as a result of your interesting meander down a musical side road.
Try persuading the bank manager who is raving at you about your overdraft that it doesn't matter because a new strain of aardvark has been discovered by a group of Canadian zoologists and he is not likely to be impressed. In each and any of these cases you could employ all the Mandelsons of this world and they could not help you one jot.
Sometimes, though, it is not just the inability of the interviewer to remember their original question which takes your breath away. It is the absence of the most obvious question of all that leaves you seething and dumbfounded.
Let us just take one very easy and obvious example. Bill Clinton has now made many speeches and answered many questions on the evils of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the necessity for US military force to be used against that country. One very simple line of questioning appears not to have been asked of anyone concerning the whole wretched affair. So let me just run with it. The answers from Bill Clinton are intended to be a fair representation of his views. STACK: Mr President, as I understand your position, you are bombing Iraq because Iraqi planes are flying over a part of Iraqi territory?
CLINTON: Yes, that part of his country is an exclusion zone from any military activity on Saddam's part.
STACK: Fine, and this is in order to protect a persecuted minority within his country, the Kurds, is it not?
CLINTON: Yes.
STACK: So, may I ask when you are going to bomb Turkey because they have defied you? Furthermore will you set up an exclusion zone in Israel to protect the Palestinians, and perhaps bomb Israel if it should allow armed settlers into this zone?
Finally, Mr President, will you on the night of your election victory when you are giving thanks to Hillary, Chelsea, Al, Tipper and your various spin doctors, remember to include your gratitude to all those Iraqi people who (involuntarily, it's true) laid down their lives in order that you should gain four more years at your current address.
At this stage I cannot put words into Clinton's mouth, because, as no one has asked him such questions, it is impossible to guess how he would answer, or what spins his doctors would go into. Indeed the nearest I came to seeing anyone coming to this line of questioning was on Newsnight when Peter Snow (never the most strident of interviewers) questioned the British ambassador to the United Nations on the night Britain putting forward its anti-Iraq resolution to the UN and just before Turkey invaded Iraq.
`What', Snow asked, `would Britain's attitude be if the Turks were to invade Iraq in their own war with the Kurds?' Our man at the UN refused to give any answer on the grounds that it was not clear yet what was happening.
So now that the Turks, persecutors of the Kurds in their own country, have invaded someone else's territory in order to extend their persecution of the Kurds, the British government has done nothing, yet it is loyally supporting the US bombing the hell out of a country in support ofthe Kurds!
The ambassador did say, though, that he defended the territorial rights of Iraq, but that there was a difference between a country and a regime. In other words territorial rights are sacredunless we don't like the government within the territory, in which case it becomes fair game for all to use it as target practice.
Hypocrisy evolving into barbarism I defy anyone to put a better spin on it.