Somehow this resonates with echoes of Caroline Kennedy's abortive bid for a Senate seat from New York, and with conservative complaints that Barack Obama is treated as "the anointed one".
Unlike Cameron's abortive bid to bomb Syria last year, legality is covered by an invitation from Iraq's hapless rulers in Baghdad and a refusal to bomb Syria.
AbbVie's approach to Shire has not led to the same job fears as Pfizer's abortive bid for AstraZeneca did.
Such deals are particularly popular with health-care and energy firms: Pfizer's recent, abortive bid for AstraZeneca, which may yet be revived, would have been a blockbuster of the genre.
Asked about accidents involving the helmetless, he says: "I don't think there's that clear a correlation".Earlier this year Dave Bloomfield, a Republican state senator in Nebraska, sponsored an abortive bid to make helmets optional for adults.
The most dangerous revelations were e-mails apparently detailing contacts between News Corporation, Mr Murdoch's company, and David Cameron's government during the firm's abortive bid to buy BSkyB, a satellite-television outfit.
The abortive bid to exile the women, who both led kleptocratic regimes, has already badly dented its credibility.The anti-corruption drive has made the unelected regime relatively popular.
Party funds that Mr Rakowski had shipped out of the country returned (via a KGB courier) to launch a new post-communist party.Mr Rakowski's career fizzled out, fittingly, in an abortive bid for the Polish senate in 2005.
In 2007 J. Sainsbury faced an ultimately abortive bid from a Qatar-backed buy-out fund, which many private shareholders supported but which the Sainsbury family was less enthusiastic about.
These will appeal to technophobes and will bring consumer-electronics firms, such as Sony and Philips, into competition with the computer industry.Despite an abortive bid to buy Palm from 3Com last year, Mr Jobs affects unconcern.
