All these years I’ve been lamenting the paucity of women in politics, and suddenly three of them pop up at once. Angela Merkel is already Chancellor of Germany, Ségolãne Royal is in the running for the Elysée, and Hillary Clinton is still favourite to be the Democrat candidate for the White House.

Am I thrilled? You bet. I would love to see a G8 summit in which the leaders of three of the most powerful countries in the world were female. Think how the dynamics of politics and foreign relations would change. Think how normal it would at last seem to have women in the world’s loftiest jobs.

And yet, and yet . . . the trouble is, I’m not sure that, if I were American or French, I would vote for either Hillary or Ségolãne on policy and personality alone. So should their gender trump all else?

I have met Hillary a couple of times and, although she is formidably intelligent, there is something scarily inauthentic about her. True, she couldn’t help being overshadowed by Bill, who lights up a room, leaving everyone else in the shade. But still, she seemed cold and artificial to me, her face a mask, her eyes unlit by her smile.

Everything about her seemed manufactured, from her looks to her small talk. There was no spontaneity, no natural warmth. She reminded me of a porcelain doll: a highly intelligent one, of course, but a doll nonetheless.

That the people who worked with her during Bill’s early days at the White House found her abrasive doesn’t surprise me. For there was none of Bill’s easy-going charm. And even her politics are manufactured. She seems prepared to go through more or less any policy contortion to become President. So did George Bush, of course, but then I wouldn’t have voted for him, either.

And now there is the alternative prospect of Barack Obama, a man with all the warmth and charisma that Hillary lacks. What’s more, he’s black, which is almost as uplifting as her being female. Admittedly, we don’t yet know enough about what he stands for or how good his judgment is. But potentially, at least, he might turn out to be a more attractive Democrat candidate than Hillary.

If I talk too much about their personalities, it is because it is so hard to judge their policies. She flip-flops according to fashion; he hardly has any policies yet, apart from opposition to the war. But nor does David Cameron, and he still looks like a credible potential Prime Minister.

Then I look over the Channel and compare Royal with Nicolas Sarkozy. Yes, she is a much nicer person. He is aggressive and arrogant — you wouldn’t want to go on holiday with him. Yet he has a Tigger-like energy and is prepared to tell the French people home truths. She would rather soothe them.

France’s labour markets need shaking up. Royal is not prepared to face up to that. Sarkozy is. If the country were in need of consolidation after a long period of bruising reforms, Royal would be just the woman. But she has peaked at the wrong time.

This is what my head tells me. But my heart feels otherwise. If Royal were to win in France, I would whoop and punch the air. That most chauvinist of countries — a country where Laurent Fabius, one of Ségolãne’s Socialist rivals, could sneer “Who’ll take care of the children?” — would have had a fantastic kick up the backside.

Ségolãne would be a wonderful role model for working mothers. If you can bear four children and still run the country, what can’t you achieve? She would prove that brains can easily be combined with beauty, that you patronise intelligent women at your peril.

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