What hope is there for the free world, when US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton describes Helen Clark as “the former Prime Minister of New Zealand” and resurrects a well-worn-out joke about her?

It went like this: at the end of World War 3, the only surviving creatures would be cockroaches and Helen Clark.

This, from the wife of a former US President who did nothing to combat terrorism, apart from firing a few misguided Cruise missiles at Afghanistan. She is part of a wealthy class system in the United States that – if she is elected – will have succeeded in ensuring that just two families have ruled the United States for the last quarter century. (If she fails, she will hardly starve, because charismatic Bill earns millions from after-dinner speeches to the rich and gullible.)

This from a woman who boasted about dodging sniper bullets in Croatia, then said – after the video was replayed – she had “misspoke”. This from a wife who said nothing about her husband’s lack of trousers when it came to Monica Lewinsky. This from someone who pledged to provide Americans with basic healthcare and failed them in every respect.

What Americans do to guide their own country – and unfortunately, many of the rest of us – is up to them. It should be borne in mind, though, that almost 33 percent of US citizens are illiterate and that we are all paying for disastrous decisions made by powerful and ignorant American leaders.

Down here in the forgotten South, we know that Helen Clark is still our prime minister – even though many of us may hope for a change. The one thing you can say about Helen Clark is that she has consistently opposed war.

Helen Clark has many faults, but if Hillary or Obama or any other American idiot should bring about a conflict that ended our dominion over the Earth, it would be nice to know that our Helen crawled from the ashes and told the cockroaches: “Didn’t I tell you that war was wrong?”

And wouldn’t it be nice to think that John Key might pop up beside her and say: “National won’t change that policy, either. And National can work with cockroaches.”