91Èȱ¬

It was the American politician Mario Cuomo who said: "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose".

Mr Cuomo never had the pleasure of a Welsh assembly election campaign or he might have had to rethink his analysis.

It's hard to think of any poet whose vocabulary would include words such as "ring-fence", "capital" or "revenue", terms with which our politicians are all too familiar. And too few words rhyme with "doorstep", although I'm ruling nothing in and nothing out, as they say..

Campaigning in cliches might be a more appropriate phrase for political parties who declare in their manifestos they are "not afraid to roll up their sleeves" and "will never be afraid to rest on their laurels".

The absence of poetry may be one reason why this election campaign feels flat, an atmosphere not helped by the stop-start public holiday weeks.

Strategies are a bit last year in Welsh politics but one party is proposing them for shopkeepers, seaside towns and even religious heritage. It sounds like a strategy for strategies.

Two parties are promising a "happier" Wales. The others aren't promising to make us more miserable; it's just that the happiness agenda doesn't appear in their manifestos.

Some policies are more long-term than others. I suspect even I won't be around to report on whether bilingualism has been delivered by 2051.

I've avoided attributing any of the policies above as I'd hate to disappoint those of you who've yet to read every manifesto.

If that challenge proves resistable, you could always start with my colleague Daniel Davies's policy poker here.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?