If you are in a political race, you want to exploit whatever tendency your opponent’s supporters have towards craziness.

Since the crazier your opponent’s noisiest fans behave, the higher the chances that neutrals may start to wonder if your opponent is just a bit crazy too, and so tend towards voting for you.

So, how best to do it?

If you can, find a way to provoke them into screaming repeatedly "We are not crazy!" Their frantic denials of craziness of course will come across as … fairly crazy.

Alternatively, behave in a non-crazy way and try to goad them to scream "You’re crazy!" Those screams too when contrasted with your genial mien will be  unconvincing.

Sarah Palin’s appearance in the US Presidential race has (so far) flummoxed the Democrats in this sense.

Grappling to find a way to dent her evident feisty womanly appeal to millions of Americans, they make attacks on her which are so weird as to say more about the attackers than about her supposed demerits.

Thus, call me a British fuddy-duddy if you will, but I just don’t think that implying that Sarah Palin preys on teenage boys is going to win over many people in the US political centre.