Hillary Bores National Press Club

Senator Hillary Clinton spoke to the National Press Club in Washington during breakfast yesterday, giving a speech on energy policy that was called "achingly dull."

"It began well enough," writes Francis Harris of Britain's Telegraph. "Resplendent in a lemon yellow two-piece and expensively bejewelled, her star power was plain the moment she entered the room. Everywhere, necks craned for a sight of the immaculately coiffured New York senator. But then she lost it. The half-hour speech was achingly dull, a meandering lecture on energy policy which left the audience stifling yawns."

Harris continued:

As she droned towards the finish, she looked out at a silent, glassy-eyed audience and acknowledged that her speech was a little unusual. "I know this is probably more wonkish than many of you had anticipated," she said, moments after offering her plans for something called geologic carbon sequestration. "But I feel very strongly about it."

There was a murmur of laughter but only minutes earlier some of those at the breakfast meeting appeared to have slumped into unconsciousness.

Others stifled yawns, held their chins in their hands or stared at the carpet or ceiling. By the time two women peace protesters made their predictable intervention on Iraq (and were predictably carried out by Mrs. Clinton's burly Secret Servicemen) the assembled journalists had largely stopped listening.

OUCH!