Adding another unanticipated sidebar to this topsy-turvy election, Kenneth Starr has lavished praise on Bill Clinton, citing his "genuine empathy for human beings", calling him "the most gifted politician of the baby boomer generation" and commending his post-presidential philanthropy, which he noted was Carteresque in its benevolence.

Starr, a former independent counsel, was the author of what's probably the most expensive piece of pornography ever published, the Starr Report which chronicled, in graphic sexual detail, Bill Clinton's affair with a 21-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.

The one-time character assassin has become a character witness.

Bill Clinton, despite being impeached for lying under oath about that affair, left office with the highest approval rating - 66% - of any departing president.

He was also credited with balancing the federal budget and reviving the American economy from its early-Nineties slump.

Since then, as Starr noted, he has followed a redemptive path. So he should be a prime asset to his wife Hillary as she seeks to become the first ever first lady to move from the East Wing of the White House to the West.

The irony of Starr's kind words is that they have come at a time when Hillary, among other woes, has a Bill problem. The man who could well become the "First Dude" - Hillary's words, not mine - is proving to be something of a liability.

Part of it stems, of course, from what eventually became the focus of Kenneth Starr's inquiry, Bill Clinton's womanising.