It's nearly midnight here in Washington and I'm exhausted as I type this. I've just come back from a dinner held by the Anglosphere Institute at the Metropolitan Club. It's the sort of place where you just happen to stand next to Henry Kissinger at the urinal. Which I did. And no, I didn't. The dinner was in honour of Andrew Roberts - the second time I have heard him speak this week. And he was good enough to give a different speech tonight. Which was nice.
I was sat next to Judge Douglas Ginsburg, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court after Robert Bork failed to get through the Senate witchhunt approval process in 1987. Ginsburg withdrew his nomination after the press wrote about him smoking a joint at university. Also sat at my table was Robert Bork's wife. I remember the Bork hearings well as they were happening during my first ever visit to the States in the summer of 1987. On my other side during dinner was a delightful lady called Beverly Danielson. I never did discover what she did, but whatever it is I am sure she does it with supreme elegance.
This morning I spent four hours in the new 18 Doughty Street Washington studios interviewing Fred Barnes from the Weekly Standard & Fox News, former Thatcher speechwriter John O'Sullivan, who is now Editor at Large for National Review magazine, Nile Gardiner from that Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom and David Norcross from the RNC and the Romney campaign. It was a bit of a marathon, but a great experience. Later on in the day we got a 15 minute interview with Mark Steyn too, so all in all we reckon we did well today.
I also discovered a fantastic clothes shop in Union Station where the shirts were about half the price compared to the UK. I binged. I admit it.
In the middle of all that I recorded my Channel 4 News podcast in ITN's Washington studio. It was about the US presidential campaign blogs, the best of which is undoubtedly Barack Obama's.
