This is what it is like to be Hillary Clinton. The motorcade, twisting and skidding through rain-splashed streets for more than an hour; the public meetings and camera lights at journey's end; the spotlight that has not let up for two decades. It is almost as if the 2008 US presidential election – hailed as the most exciting for a generation – had never ended.
But this is a campaign without a vote. Today, Clinton's convoy is snaking through S?o Paulo, Brazil, not South Hampton, New Hampshire. She herself is no longer an aspirant for the White House, despite what the overnight flights, town hall meetings and strategy sessions that make up her gruelling schedule might suggest. Instead, she is in Latin America to shore up relations with the region and promote a new idea of US leadership, one very much built around herself.
She's had bigger and more ecstatic audiences than the 700-odd students and staff crammed into the hall tonight at Zumbi dos Pradares, an Afro-Brazilian university, but she's still greeted by a wave of raised arms as the audience snaps away at her with their mobile phones.