The Democrats had an excellent convention in Denver this week. All the stars in the party's firmament glittered as brightly as ever: Hillary, Bill, Chelsea; the Clintons; Hillary, Bill, Hillary.

On Monday all the talk was about Hillary's delegates; how bitter they were and how they had not really achieved closure after the primary election which - and you may not have known this - she actually won if only the votes had been counted properly.

On Tuesday Hillary herself was the star. Introduced by her elegant daughter, Chelsea, she appeared in a blazing orange pantsuit that actually shone in the lights so that when you tried to look at her all you could see was a kind of solar glare.

On Wednesday, Hillary was at it again, in a more terrestrial blue this time, taking the floor of the convention at the pivotal point of the state-by-state roll-call vote for the presidential candidate, and calling for suspension of the process and a decision by acclamation.

Later that evening, the highlight of the week was Bill. He wiped away a tear or two as delighted delegates welcomed him back into their arms. When he had finished, everybody let out a huge sigh of relief and gratitude, finally knowing that he too was now over it. He had graciously forgiven them for ruining his year by choosing not to extend the dynasty.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. Last night somebody called Barack Obama came along and gave a really good speech. My goodness, he's a talented young man and will surely be a real presidential contender himself one day. The Clintons are going to like him.

In case we didn't know it already we were shown this week that with the Clintons, it's all really their story even when it's somebody else's story. Gore, Kerry, Obama - they may come and go but the Clintons stay for ever. Their performance was one extended recitation of that old narcissist joke: “Enough about me. What do you think about me?”

But it was not only another repeat of the old Clinton drama that gave the Democratic National Convention an oddly retro feel. There was, of course, Ted Kennedy, stricken with cancer, bravely mustering the strength to deliver one last rhetorical flourish that whispered echoes of a great Democratic past.

And there were occasional attempts by desultory groups of protesters outside to recreate the Spirit of ‘68, when a previous Democratic convention dissolved in violence and recrimination. This time, however, nobody's heart was really in it.

But by far the clearest sign of how backward-looking this progressive party has become was its attempt to make the 2008 election a rerun of the elections of 2000 and 2004, when George W. Bush was the Republican nominee.

This is the primary strategy of the Obama campaign for the presidency - to run against Mr Bush, even though he is not on the ballot. It is a completely reasonable plan and if they can pull it off they surely ought to win. Despite the doubts about Senator Obama, his inexperience and inability to connect with ordinary Americans, President Bush remains about as popular with those same Americans as the Chinese Olympic gymnastic team.

Every speech from the podium this week sought to bind John McCain, the actual Republican candidate this year, to his predecessor. The latest television advertising features a shot of Senator McCain and President Bush embracing.

Six months ago, it would have been an implausible claim. Senator McCain, of course, ran against Mr Bush in the 2000 Republican primary and lost after a bitter fight.

From then on he became the most reliably anti-Bush figure in the whole Republican Party. He clashed with the President over tax cuts, judicial appointments, the conduct of the war in Iraq, the treatment of detainees in the War on Terror and on campaign finance reform.

When he sought his party's nomination in the primary this year, he was attacked by almost all the other candidates for being insufficiently supportive of President Bush's policies and core conservative principles.

But in the course of winning that primary, of course, Senator McCain had to make some accommodations with the party's base. Yet since he won without firmly convincing conservatives that he was one of them, he has continued to close the rhetorical gap between himself and the President.

And it has paid off. Surprisingly, given his once-pariah status among Republicans, Senator McCain is now more popular among his party's voters than Senator Obama is among his, with 90 per cent of Republicans backing their candidate, against 80 per cent of Democrats for theirs. But this very success is what Democrats now believe that they can exploit.

Next week in St Paul, Minnesota, at his own party's convention, Senator McCain has a tricky task: to keep his party's base - among whom President Bush is still popular - energised, while persuading the rest of the electorate that he is not in fact a Bush clone.

He may not be helped by what could be a freakish moment of meteorological fate. On Monday night President Bush is scheduled to speak to the convention at almost precisely the moment that a potentially lethal hurricane is expected to make landfall at or near New Orleans. Perhaps God is a Democrat after all.

And yet I suspect that the charge that Senator McCain is running for the third Bush term will not, in the end, stick. The Arizona senator is not George Bush, and Democrats, and I suspect voters, know that.

On the big issues that will confront the next president, in fact Senator McCain offered a sharply divergent approach. When President Bush was fiddling two years ago as Iraq burnt, Senator McCain was urging a change of strategy, one that has now borne fruit for the US.

While President Bush was gazing into Valdimir Putin's eyes and seeing the purity of his soul, Senator McCain was giving warning of the dangers of a resurgent and authoritarian Russia. While the President was cementing a governing style that emphasised maximal partisanship, Senator McCain was building bipartisan coalitions with Democrats in Congress.

There will be plenty of warm words for President Bush next week. But Senator McCain will be quietly making the case that, if he had been president these past four years, his party and his country would be in much better shape.

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