The smell of an upset in the UK election is starting to work its way across the pond. EJ Dionne of the Washington Post reports on it today.

His vision of Brown as Truman has much to recommend it — especially as Cameron is such a convincing Dewey.

The Republicans went into 1948 having swept the Congress two years before with the slogan Had Enough? — a pithier version of We Can’t Go On Like ThIs. Leading in the polls, Dewey, an establishment WASP who was the closest thing to an Old Etonian you’ll ever get in America, felt he only had to stay out of trouble to win.

But in the end, famously, it was the ‘little guy’ Truman who upset the man in the fancy striped pants.

Protest queen Joan Baez looks back 40 years.

A must read: Gallup has a survey showing the state of play in every state in terms of party ID.

It shows the task facing the GOP, although it’s nothing particularly new – Nixon used to go on and on about Republican presidential candidates starting at a disadvantage.

The Washington Post has a new series starting today with extracts from an election study: The Battle for America 2008 by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson.

Should be a good read. Monday’s instalment focuses on Sarah Palin.

This one on Radio 4 every Sunday at 7.15pm had slipped under our radar until now – the BBC’s man in Washington, Matt Frei, looks at aspects of American life.

Topping the bill tonight: Roe v Wade, featuring an interview with the original Jane Roe, whose views on abortion have apparently come full circle (something else that had passed us by).

Americana, 7.15pm, Radio 4, with half a dozen past shows still available on iPlayer.

Vanity Fair editor (no less) Todd Purdum [UPDATE actually National Editor is his title, Graydon Carter is of course the boss man] has a long, long piece on Gov Palin.

Yes, it’s a hatchet job. No, it doesn’t tell us anything new. And yes, the sexism is almost beyond parody (’Has she, like, got post-natal depression or something?’) But like everything else to do with the Governor, it’s still a must-read.

Gov Palin’s great champion Bill Kristol is not amused and NRO’s Jim Geraghty even less so.

Chuck Todd’s on Hardball duty at the moment so the interview with Purdum last night on Hardball was rather more bearable than if Matthews was in the chair.

CNN on the new Nixon tapes released yesterday.

Groan! He still hasn’t ruled out a return to front-line politics.

The Washington Post has the interview.

From the Washington Post’s Sunday magazine, an extract from a new book on Donald Rumsfeld.

It’s not immediately clear what the hatchet job rating is but it’s a must-read all the same.

Bradley Graham, long-time Pentagon correspondent for the Post, is the author. The book’s title is By His Own Rules.

No surprise that she agreed to talk to Matt Lauer on the Today Show: we noted in December that he had broken from the pack and interviewed her sensibly with no agenda.

And no surprise either that things should have reached such a stage that Letterman thought it was OK to joke about her and her daughter in such a disparaging way.

We noted the double standard during the campaign when a sleazy Palin lookalike contest was an Editor’s Pick on the CBS News website.

Here’s Palin and Lauer this morning.