Last year, NR called Bill Owens of Colorado “America’s best governor.” Well, he’s still the best–and now even people in the UK are joining the buzz. Here’s Gavin Esler, writing in The Scotsman: “There are very few times when I have met an American politician and thought: ‘Ah, yes, this person is a superstar.’ It happened with Bill Clinton in October 1991. And it has just happened again, with an American state governor who has been visiting Scotland. … He is Governor Bill Owens of Colorado. Owens is a tax-cutting conservative Republican from a mountain state in the American west, about as far away politically from Bill Clinton as you can imagine. … Whether you think US policy is right or wrong, what impressed me about Governor Owens was that he defended the Bush administration better than most members of the administration themselves manage to achieve. In a country where state governors sometimes do not know much about the world beyond their own borders (like Mr Bush himself just three years ago), Owens is far more like Clinton, a politician who seems too big for the politics of his home state. … In about three years’ time, the Republican party will start to look for a candidate for the presidency in 2008. Maybe then you will have cause to remember the name of Bill Owens.” (For even more on Owens, here’s an excerpt from his BBC interview.)