Monday November 12, 1979

_. Can I talk about Senator Edward Kennedy and then Mrs Margaret Thatcher? The senator is most certainly the next president of the United States, but Mother doesn't seem to think so. I am of the opinion that anyone with the surname Kennedy can do nothing but succeed in American politics. Mother says that the fact that Teddy murdered his girlfriend in 1969 rules him out of the race. As we all know, Americans like their presidents to be bent, crooked and twisted. My chauffeur, Jim, says that the sitting president commands tremendous power over his party and that it would be unprecedented for the Democrats to discard the president and select some other candidate. However, the word is that Carter now is more unpopular than Nixon was in his final days after Watergate, and that Carter's credibility is nil. We shall see.

My next subject is our dearly beloved prime minister. Isn't she doing well? Tonight she addressed the Lord Mayor of London's banquet and gave a performance almost Churchillian in its stature. Listening to her tonight made me so aware that at last we have a leader. We actually have someone of stature at the helm. Harold Macmillan has likened Thatcher to Queen Elizabeth I.

-=-