One morning when I was twelve my father woke me shortly after daybreak to tell me that the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, had died. My eyes stayed open long enough to note tear stains on my father’s cheeks before I fell effortlessly back to sleep. However, my father’s distress over the death of a politician at the far ends of the earth may have subliminally reorganised my brain while I slept. I awoke with an intense curiosity about American politics, which, with the impetus of opportunities for close inspection of its processes, has developed and entrenched itself over the decades.…