How satisfying for Rupert Murdoch to sit on the top table at yesterday's dinner to celebrate Time magazine's issue celebrating himself and the other 99 most influential people in the world.

On one side of host Rick Stengel was John McCain, the Republican nominee; the Australian media mogul was on his other side; and Murdoch's New York rival, Mort Zuckerman of the Daily News was in the rafters. And the Observer's John Koblin passes on a rumor that McCain was hoping to bend the newspaper proprietor's ear at the Time party.

Murdoch is accustomed to pandering from politicians like the UK's Gordon Brown, but he's had surprisingly little influence in the US. A regular at 10 Downing Street in London, Murdoch has-astonishingly-never been invited to the White House, and only recently met George Bush. So much for the vast right-wing conspiracy of the liberal imagination-of which Murdoch is assumed to be such an integral part. (One assumes Karl Rove and other Bush aides must have dealt with News Corporation's Fox News through Roger Ailes, Murdoch's Jabba-like lieutenant.)

Here's the irony: it's only now with the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal that the 77-year-old media mogul is accumulating the influence in the US that he's always coveted and that liberals have long feared-just as he enters his cuddly dotage.