The outcome appears more certain with each passing moment: barring a sudden game-changing event, a significant victory for Illinois senator Barack Obama and his running mate, Delaware senator Joseph Biden. A perfect storm from all azimuths has provided the backdrop.

One highly-respected analyst writes that “metrics of the selection argue strongly that this campaign is over” and with the economy at the centre, “it’s difficult to see how this gets any better for Republicans up or down the ballot”.

Obama has raised the stunning total of $US650 million with more to come – $150m alone in September or $5m per day – and is outspending senator John McCain four-to-one.

Historians will argue for years whether 2008 was primarily the product of a brilliant, innovative Democrat campaign or the result of a mediocre and lacklustre Republican campaign, weighted by the millstone of the Bush presidency.

The first President Bush, picked by Reagan in 1980 as his vice president, became president in 1988, waged a highly-successful military campaign to dislodge Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, enjoyed a popularity rating above 80 per cent – then broke a key tax promise and plummeted to a humiliating defeat by Bill Clinton in 1992. In US politics, that’s hard to accomplish.

Many political factors are at work: the war in Iraq, bitter partisan wrangling, profligate spending, widespread political corruption in both parties, an unfavourable international scene, arguments over climate change.

The financial meltdown of September brought panic on Wall Street and in every corner of the globe – governments now scramble for stopgap remedies. Legendary financial houses have crashed and burned, credit markets have seized up and, despite huge injections of government money, businesses grind to a halt, unemployment rises dramatically and future dislocations with prolonged misery are now unavoidable. 

Moodys judges 27 of the 50 US states to be in recession, another dozen on the edge. Automotive giants Chrysler and General Motors are reeling, their share prices falling to unimaginable lows and there are ripple effects in every sector.

Driven by unrealistic hypothetical “models” created by young MBAs from leading business schools, the Wall St wiseguys argued that the bubble could expand forever without bursting. Murky financial derivatives and the appetite for enhanced returns led banks, hedge funds and individuals to take risks far beyond the boundaries of prudence, and with OPM – Other People’s Money. 

“Collateralised Debt Obligations” sliced assets into meaningless pieces that couldn’t be properly valued. Tens of thousands of homes are “under water”, worth significantly less than mortgages funding them. Villages in Norway invested and lost public monies in pursuit of higher interest rates.

Unconscionable pay packages and bonuses in the hundreds of millions of dollars abound – one departing Wall St executive hired in September now has a severance package of up to $25m. It’s expected crime will increase.

All of this had little to do with politics as we think of it but much to do with the systemic and institutionalised excess and corruption that came to pervade the US financial and political systems.

No matter who’s elected and how much politicians thump the drums for change, there’s little likelihood that much will change anytime soon, because to accomplish fundamental change the foxes must be chased out of the chicken coops.

Lamentably, it’s the foxes who write the rules. But while a bad patch for the US lies ahead, the “flight to safety” and a glance at currency exchange rates demonstrates that the world still depends on America and its dollar, the last refuge for nearly everyone.

Stay tuned.

Part-time Gibbston resident Richard Allen is a former US presidential National Security Advisor and Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution & Peace