IT WAS FITTING that Bill Clinton should make an appearance at the public obsequies of the Blair era this week. The Blair project was wrapped from the first in layers of American packaging. The Clintonisation of the party, with its image rebranding and focus-group vocabulary, was hated initially by the Labour traditionalists who loved the cleansing futility of defeat more than the soiling exigencies of victory.

They came around. But soon, in their critical minds, to the Americanisation of campaigning was added the presidentialisation of British government, as Mr Blair replaced time-consuming encumbrances such as the Cabinet with personal enhancements such as his own aircraft.

The ease with which the Prime Minister segued from the Clinton years to the Bush era — with its fateful consequences for him — only underlined the extent to which Mr Blair seemed unhealthily fixated on the US.

So carried away with the American model did he become that, two years ago, he unwisely adopted another American innovation — term limits — saying he would not serve beyond three terms. The idea of limiting US presidents to two terms came to fruit in the 1950s after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had alarmed conservatives by seeming to inaugurate the era of the presidency-for-life. But Mr Blair, along with every second-term president since, has discovered term limits curtail not only a leader’s time in office but also his effectiveness.

Mr Blair’s speech this week too was suffused with American echoes and cadences. A friend commented to me in the middle of the peroration that it sounded increasingly like Martin Luther King’s dramatic final declamation to the startled crowd in Atlanta.

“I may not get there with you,” Mr Blair, the soon-to-be martyred leader seemed to be telling his people. “But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land” — of city academies and foundation hospitals. If he had told us that he had a dream that one day all the little Brownites and all the little Blairites would hold hands together like sisters and brothers there wouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house.

You can take this America analogy too far. We can rest assured, for example, certainly after this week, that unlike Mr Clinton Mr Blair doesn’t harbour any ambitions of returning to the pinnacle of politics as a trailing spouse. But the American model is very much on the minds of the Blair people. They say privately that they have consciously modelled the long Blair goodbye on the last year of President Clinton’s term. That was reflected in the Prime Minister’s pledge to work for Middle East peace in his waning days, a kind of Sisyphean penance for his supposed sins in the past few years. This is designed to match Mr Clinton’s efforts on the road to Jerusalem in the gloomy twilight of his post-impeachment. Of course, for all his work, even the American President’s efforts came to nought. You won’t find many people willing to bet Mr Blair will fare better.

But the Blair team are thinking about another lesson from that era. It concerns the election campaign of 2000, when Al Gore lost to George W. Bush, ending eight years of centre-left administration. They wonder if Gordon Brown may turn out to be Tony Blair’s Al Gore; that is, the designated successor who is handed the conditions for an historic victory but fumbles badly.

The similarities are tempting. In 2000 the US economy was in healthy shape and the Democrats seemed to have finally escaped their capture by outdated tax-and-spend left-wingery. But Mr Gore, in an effort to establish a separate identity for himself from his overshadowing leader, took a left turn. He dropped the “New Democrat” mantra of inclusivity and moderation and started appealing to the party’s traditional class-warrior instincts with his “people against the powerful” campaign. Mr Gore, just like Mr Brown, was opposed on the hustings by a canny and rather charming moderate conservative emphasising compassion and trying to change the unappealing face of his party. He seemed to some a bit of an empty vessel, though his critics said he was a rigid rightwinger underneath the engaging façade.

This is all, as you would expect from some of the Blairites, a little unfair on Mr Brown. The Chancellor, unlike Mr Gore, was as much the architect of the new Labour success as was Mr Blair and is unlikely to turn his back on it. His contribution to the relative economic successes of the last nine years has been far greater than any US vice-president could ever bring to an American administration.

What’s more, the idea that Mr Gore blew it because he wouldn’t follow the Clinton model is overdone. If you look at where Mr Gore lost most votes in 2000 — southern states where the traditional values were most offended by Mr Clinton’s personal behaviour — you see that the election was as much about the President’s vices as it was about the Vice-President. While Mr Blair’s alleged transgressions have been mostly political rather than personal, that is a lesson that Mr Brown’s people may feel is more relevant to whatever difficulties their man has in the next couple of years.

But probably the main reason Mr Gore lost (sort of) in the end is that he just seemed less appealing to undecided voters than his opponent. This after all, has been the one truly consistent factor in all presidential elections in the past 30 years: when choosing a president, Americans weigh his character at least as much as his party’s policies or record.

As they demonstrated painfully well this week, Mr Blair and Mr Brown, are, like Mr Clinton and Mr Gore, at opposite ends of the charisma spectrum. But the Chancellor, for all his enthusiasm for things American, is in the end betting that in Britain personality counts for less than it does in the US. That voters will choose substance and experience over charm and warmth. David Cameron, for all his recent discovery of America’s ills, has blurred the differences between the two parties and is hoping the contest will be above all between two men.

The outcome will be the ultimate proof of how Americanised British political culture has truly become in the past 12 years.

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