Mr Bush, on the other hand, will stroll in in leisurely fashion at half past nine, take a good two hours for lunch and a two mile run, and wind up his day at 5 o'clock. His year will be liberally sprinkled with golfing and fishing holidays. Now, you might imagine that this laid-back lifestyle would endear Mr Bush to the electorate, in the same way that his refusal to be a hard-nosed policy wonk like Mr Gore apparently does. American presidential elections are the ultimate spectacle, after all, and this is an audience fed on a diet of an average seven hours a day of TV viewing that spawns attention spans of seconds not minutes: who has the time for boring policy detail? But forget not that this is America: a nation of earnest workers who even take the business of leisure so seriously that it has their lazy friends across the Atlantic mocking.

And so it is that The Guardian newspaper of Britain, the ultimate liberal intellectual's paper, appears to have started a campaign to sully Mr Bush's fair name by implying that the man is lazy and will not work nights so that Americans' days may be joyful. The newspaper is making a particular point of harping on the average 15 minutes devoted by Mr Bush to taking decisions on each of 245 executions in his tenure as governor of Texas.

Capital punishment became a major election issue earlier in the campaign. What think you, dear reader? For our part, we do not find the prospect of economy in White House electricity bills unduly disturbing in and of itself. So long, of course, as the hours that are spent at work are spent productively. But of course the matter may be viewed differently by Americans annoyed that they work long hours so that the leisured classes can have longer holidays.