I might have written too soon. While Gordon Brown remains the heads-on favorite to succeed Tony Blair, there's always a chance he won't. One of his potential rivals is coping with a smear campaign - which is a good sign the succession isn't settled yet. (In Britain, it's decided by the party with the majority of seats in the House of Commons, if a prime minister quits between general elections.) If the unlikely happens, and some believe it will, Britain will have a 41 year-old prime minister, David Miliband, running against a 41 year-old rival, David Cameron. It might make reservations about Barack Obama's age seem a little moot.