We have arrived back in the UK to begin the rest of our lives. Memo to other Brits who might think of coming home from the US: spend your final US holiday in (fill in the name of your least favourite US place) - don't do what we do and fly home from northern California. Granted I was unimpressed with San Francisco but for climate and lifestyle and gorgeous scenery there is nowhere better than the rest of the state. But you already know this.

What I would like to do is thank people who have contributed to the blog - including those who find my views frustratingly jejune - and ask you to forgive my failure to reply to many many fascinating insights including (rather shamefully) several I nicked for my book.

Now back in the UK I find myself utterly at sea - I say hello to people I pass in the street. They lunge on, muttering insults. We'll get used to it. But we will never forget the kindness of America. In Swindon buying a car the other day (yes, life has changed) the conversation turned to a familiar theme but one that endlessly fascinates me - the relative peaceableness of the American life, guns and all. Too many Brits seriously think that America is violent. It isn't. Most America lives are free of violence and the threat of it in a way no life in Swindon can be. Why that's true is a subject all of its own (religion, gun ownership, moral fibre, space, social cohesiveness?) and one worthy of a future study.

By the way, we bought a large second-hand American car and we will pay the extra costs with pride... Have a nice day !

And yet I feel torn by the European familiarity of San Francisco - its rationalism and secularism and public transportism. Being European in outlook is not - it seems to me - the future for America.

Americans can learn things from Europeans but the essence of America - even if it involves weird notions of Biblical denial of women's rights - is somehow more brutally vivacious than the jaded options over the Atlantic. So many European tourists here: poor things, they have travelled ten hours to come to the only part of America that isn't American. They'll go home knowing nothing.

Enjoyed LA and noted the owners of powder blue Bentleys seemed to have been unaffected so far by the economic crisis.

San Francisco is so European in contrast - prickly dislike of motor cars that stops you turning left or right when you want to and encourages you on to public transport. It's even cold and grey: we could be home already.

As for America's future - this country is full of space and youth and and hope. The rest of the world can seem so jaded in contrast. When people carp at America I think of the Robert Frost poem The Importer - sometimes reviled as racist and certainly not fashionable nowadays - that hits back with wit and, to me, wisdom.

The whole point of America is that you CAN fail. Really badly. And America itself does, regularly. But the failure - the harshness and the unfairness and the ugliness of much of American life - is what drives the place ever forward. So come on Adrian (whoops - let the cat out of the bag) let's add the third cheer...

Which is why Obama didn't want an election in the first place - a rather cowardly refusal to do the right thing it always seemed to me. Anyhow Kirk is a strong candidate, though since we were students together (at the LSE) is highly open to blackmail from Brits...Only kidding.

But before going, we are at an undisclosed location (alright: Kiawah Island, South Carolina) working out the wonders of the American-designed medical technology that my son will use to control his type one diabetes when back in Britain.

Since I asked for names for the Republicans in 2012 the party has sunk further into disrepair with the Sarah Palin train wreck. I suspect that she is actually a Democrat - a creation of Rahm Emanuel perhaps.

It'll have to be Pawlenty now for the simple reason that he seems to have a little constancy about him: that is their problem; it's not the sex scandals or the dubious TV performances or the ethics investigations that have undone the Republican pretenders, it is the swivel-eyed oddness of the outfit. It can be fixed but step one is recognising the need to fix as Karl Rove seems to grasp.

The other fascinating development in recent days has been the end - or not - of the Obamas' search for a church.

I have suggested it before but let me lay it on the line here in black and white: THE MAN IS A QUAKER. He may not yet know it but that is where his search should end. There is a lovely Meeting House somewhere around Dupont Circle as well so he could get there easily.

As the author asks: "Barack Obama, where are you?"

On healthcare, the answer, I think, is that the loss of Tom Daschle is beginning to be felt - he could have knocked heads together in a way no-one else really can.

Now the day comes down to a visit to a gun shop (we've run out of ammo since Obama took over!) and a nice lunch in Beaufort. But as ever we should overlook individual disappointment to survey the bigger picture: the Republicans have a catastrophic lack of young able leaders who can take on Obama in 2012 as noted here and here.

I hereby challenge someone to come up with a serious name for 2012. First person to post the correct result gets a prize (in 2012). Tempted to offer a free holiday to Argentina but it might have to be something less tangible; respect perhaps.

Meanwhile this is a big week for the future of American healthcare and the questions the president has to answer are set out here in a piece that is hostile but fair I think in pointing out the downsides of the British and Canadian systems.

On the other hand, the US system is grotesquely unfair.

The honest answer surely is that there is a price to pay for fairness - care for the richest Americans would, in the future, be curtailed.

I wonder if they have looked at solitary men driving tractors in sweltering South Carolina fields -- when I went to see him a few months ago he revealed that -- Gladstone like -- he enjoyed getting out into the great outdoors and re-arranging it. Perhaps that's what he's been doing. We picked up as well that his wife didn't want him to run so maybe he's been sulking.

Meanwhile on Iran, the President has had trouble getting his message out on the local media so has been turning again to us foreigners to charm and cajole.

The outreach to foreign media (which began with the satellite channel Al Arabiya) is now an established part of the Obama strategy, and as the BBC has pointed out, can reap the reward of face time with folks CNN et al cannot reach.

Lovely ceremony, proud family, good speeches. And above all a reminder that this administration is not yet fully staffed!

Bizarre but true: Phil (who is a friend so I will say nothing about his competence and politics) is by no means the last aboard. Others still languish un-confirmed and unable to begin their public service.

And yet, in other respects, the administration is getting old - with some real falling out now among constituencies upset by the compromises made in government and worried that Obama is going the same way on their issues that Kennedy did on civil rights.

I suspect the Obama view is that there is a long, long way to go. He faces no imminent election - and might gain politically if his Democratic friends in Congress get singed a little in 2010 - so he presses on at his pace and with his priorities.

And always the knowledge that the backing he received from the middle ground of politics is fragile and needs to be worked on.

He could have coped quite cheerfully with an Ahmadinejad loss of course but also with a clean-cut win where he could have expressed respect for the government and moved on.

But now it is difficult for him to deal substantively with a regime that seems so illegitimate - result: stasis.

And the result of that could be growing pressure for any outreach to Iran to come to an end.

But here is a further thought. The eventual winner of the race to be Virginia's next governor can only stay in the post for two terms. Term limits, which used to be a fashionable cause on the US right, are making a bit of a comeback and for reasons that British voters might recognise.

They can work in legislatures, and even in a parliamentary system in which the executive is based in the legislature it might still be possible to find a way - 12-year limits perhaps? - of getting new blood circulating constantly. But do they work? As ever there is a downside.

But this slightly quieter one (the perspective of those of any faith/opinion who are chucked in jail by any regime) - is interesting, I think.

UPDATE:

Also interesting to get a hostile perspective from the American left.