I have, along with several other commentators, performed the last rites over spin. It's had its day, we agree. People can see the strings being pulled. It worked for a while, we nod sagely, but now the public thirsts for a more open, honest kind of politics. As if to prove our point, Jo Moore, a new Labour spin-doctor, descends to new depths, suggesting that "bad news" be snuck out under the cover of the World Trade Center attacks.
Yuck, spin is disgusting. It stinks. And yet, and yet . . . I can't help wondering whether there isn't some good use for the dark arts, after all.
Look at it this way: Tony Blair has the Commons eating out of his hand, nibbling gratefully at the crumbs of information and crusts of philosophy that the war leader brings them. He is, according to most of the press, "a hero to Americans". His exhausting diplomatic travels have helped shore up the grand coalition in Pakistan and Russia - and perhaps in the Gulf, too. He has even tried to reach the very militant and angry Muslims to whom Osama Bin Laden is appealing, going on Arab television to argue his case.
Before we just sink back and admit that Blair is president of the world, it might be worth asking just what the secret of his success is so far - and these are still very early days. What ties it all together? Is it courage, or geopolitical vision, or the final expression of Third Way politics? No, no, no. He has courage; that is clear. Apart from anything else, by standing so quickly alongside the US, he has made himself and his family (not to mention his country) a target for life. Beyond that, he had the courage to see that this "war" could not be ducked.
But there are other leaders around the world with similar courage - so that, by itself, is not the answer. Nor is it the geo-political vision, as explained to the boggle-eyed Labour conference. Blair's big picture of the world remade, with an end to poverty, hunger, civil war and religious strife - and, no doubt, even the whales saved, too - is one that cannot help but appeal to those on the left. But it was a glittering Jerusalem, somewhere over the rainbow. Today's coalition against the Taliban, which includes ex-KGB men, monarchical despots and grubby little dictatorships, is a short-term marriage of convenience. Just wait until all this is over and then ask whether the Prime Minister's new friend in the White House will return to the Kyoto process, and change his mind on nation-building, the United Nations, aid and nuclear treaties. Don't hold your breath.
Nor, obviously, is Blair's ascendancy about philosophy. He has a simple, "will this work?" approach to the world, for which the Third Way was a flimsy intellectual covering.
In the end, the answer is that it's Blair's brilliance at empathy and language - PR, if you like - that has given him the edge over Bush, Chirac, Schroder and the rest. Partly, this is an obvious point. Within minutes of the disaster, Blair was saying the right things about its being not representative of Muslims, but a great terrorist challenge to the world, while Bush was fumbling for words, and finding the wrong ones. And Jerusalem or not, Blair's speech in Brighton was an oratorical tour de force, watched admiringly across the west. Here at home, his relentless defence of Islam as a religion has been fine and eloquent.
To say he's a good talker who can make all sorts of different people believe he "really" agrees with them is a familiar point. But, for once, I don't think our familiarity with Blair's sense of good PR should breed contempt. We are up against another great media manipulator in Bin Laden. Look at his videotaped call to arms. Think of the 20-minute delay between destroying one tower and the next, to ensure that the TV cameras had time to get there.
Well, maybe the spin-doctor's hour has come. For Blair to demand the right of reply on al-Jazeera, the youthful TV station in Qatar watched around the Arab world, and which Bin Laden used for his call to rise up, was a stroke of PR genius.
Once the missiles and bombs are raining down, no politician can feel that he or she is in full control of events. Violence, including that meted out by the US air force and Royal Navy submarines, breeds anger - and anger is unpredictable. But we know, surely, that ultimately this war can be won only with words, friendship and reassurance, not with explosives alone. It needs someone who empathises enough with Muslim opinion to fight constantly to reassure it, rather than inflame it. Without that, whatever happens in caves around Jalalabad, the liberal, tolerant, open society we are fighting to protect is doomed. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are evil maniacs who must be stopped before they kill thousands more ordinary people, again and again. But the dreadful prospect of al-Qaeda becoming Muslim martyrs has to be countered with explanations from the west.
Let the spin-doctors stop trying to hide dreadful statistics about crime or hospital waiting lists from a cynical British public. Their talents can be put to much better use in persuading the Muslim world what this struggle is really about. Yes, spin is disgusting. But if it replaces bullets or bombs, I'm not complaining.
