Dream team for the top job

Richard Wolffe gets on board bus Obama, where the presidential favourite tells him why he has stuck to his principles by running a positive campaign and avoided unleashing attacks on his fellow candidates

US Democratic presidential candidate, Illinois Senator Barack Obama, waits backstage at a campaign rally yesterday in Hanover, New Hampshire. He was hoping to deal a second, crushing blow to Hillary Clinton’s White House hopes and boost his quest to become the first black US president, as New Hampshire voted in key presidential primaries. Picture: Getty Images

BARACK OBAMA was badly in need of sleep, but he wasn’t going to get any just yet. Late last Wednesday night, the candidate and his wife, Michelle, collapsed on the sofa aboard their campaign bus. It was the end of a 17-hour day rolling around Iowa trawling for votes. They had just come from a night-time rally in Waterloo, where they double-teamed an enthusiastic crowd in an overheated school gym. On the bus, Obama nursed his raw throat with tea from a steel travel mug, his arm around Michelle.