Tuesday morning (GMT) and it isn’t over until the big one warbles.

Despite the polls, there are still a lot of unknowns — I’m not going to do a Donald Rumsfeld here, but I could. Apart from the so-called Bradley Effect, which may have lost some of its force, there’s also what I call, The Last Minute Panic Syndrome, which occurs when voters enter the polling station and think, “What do we know about this man? Can we trust that he’ll be up to it in these dangerous times?”

Don’t underestimate the latter — Bill Clinton (self-serving as ever) suggested that Obama is aware of it himself and obsessively phones every expert he can lay his hands on.

To declare an interest: before the primaries, I predicted here that John McCain would win. That was because I couldn’t see anyone better out there at the time.

It’s different now, of course. Barack Obama is definitely the quantum leap candidate, suggesting millennial change, at the very least in appearances and attitudes. If he isn’t elected, it will seem like a postponement of the inevitable, and, to many, an opportunity lost. There could be violence on the streets if it’s close.

My reservations about him are that he has unnervingly small experience, especially at this time of economic meltdown and other military dangers facing all of us. The world today is every bit as unstable as it was in 1914, 1930 and 1939. In comparison, 9/11 seems like a minor local incident — and look how Bush mishandled that.

Obama’s voting record in the Senate suggests he’s closer to Gordon Brown politically than any comparable American. Believe me, that is not a good sign. He may have a much stronger intellect that “W,” but in the present crisis conditions, any intellect is like an ice cube in a volcano.

But it has to be one or the other, McCain or Obama. Everyone else has been eliminated. The Veeps are all but forgotten in this moment of decision — even the gutsy Sarah Palin.

I’m not going to resile from my earlier prediction of McCain, although I know it could seem ridiculous by morning. The Mac may be back, but does he have the key to the croft?

If Obama does win, I predict he will bitterly disappoint his fervent evangelists who believe the world will change the moment he takes the oath. The appearance of the world may change, but the fundamentals will remain.

The next decade will be more like the 1930s than the 1980s. Obama himself may conclude in retrospect that he was unlucky to win when he did.

The conundrum though is, could he have reached the White House at any other time?

John Evans

One sentence of Barack Obama’s, in a recent speech to cheering supporters, stopped me short in my tracks.

The passage was: “With your support I will win this election, and together we will save the world.”

I can’t guarantee that it’s a verbatim version, but the phase, “we will save the world,” is.

Let’s hope that, if he wins, a more practical and realistic character emerges. The last thing the world needs now is another messianic, emotion-driven President in the White House.

Another James Monroe* — described as a “quiet President,” despite his clear achievements — would do very nicely in the current reduced circumstances.

* James Monroe Facts, from MSN Encarta:
Fifth President of the United States
Birth: April 28, 1758
Death July 4, 1831
Home State: Virginia
Party: Democratic-Republican
Terms In Office: 1817-1821, 1821-1825
Vice President: Daniel D. Tompkins
Significant Acts:
* Ordered the suppression of Seminole uprisings in Florida in 1817.
* Purchased Florida from Spain for the settlement of $5 million in Spanish debt.
* Signed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which set limits on the expansion of slavery into newly-acquired territories.
* Adopted the policy of setting aside land for Native Americans in the Great Plains.
* Signed a treaty with Russia establishing a boundary to Russian territory in North America.
* Proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine, opposing European intervention in the affairs of nations in the Western Hemisphere.

He certainly leaves the last three Presidents standing.

John Evans

I’ve just been watching the live pictures from Ground Zero in New York commemorating the tragic events of 9/11 in 2001.

I was particularly interested in the segment where the two Presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, came together to lay flowers on the spot that symbolizes that most cowardly of attacks.

The pictures told their own story of the titanic battle between two worthy aspirants for the most powerful office in the world.

John McCain seemed sprightly and energized, Barack Obama languid and strangely out of the loop.

To my eye, McCain appeared every inch the American President, even his white hair teased that impression along. It didn’t help that Obama was without his wife, Michelle, which dulled his psychological force. McCain had his spouse elegantly playing the First Lady role.

Americans will have watched the body language closely. I suspect that many who are not fanatical supporters of either man will have concluded that McCain is the anointed candidate, carrying the torch of office into the election on November 2.

Small impressions maybe, but big psychological mood changers, like the brilliant introduction of Sarah Palin at just the right moment, make all the difference in a tight race.

Andrew Sullivan has said that McCain is the tactician to Obama’s strategist, but it is the 72-year-old who has played the psychology card to greater effect. He is truly the heir to Ronald Reagan.

Obama, for all his talents, is the descendant of Kerry, McGovern and Dukakis. One wonders how tidy his sock drawer is.

In the end, it’s the psychology, stupid.

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When Sarah Palin came bounding into the world’s consciousness this week, like Annie Oakley riding shotgun on the Deadwood stage, those of us who don’t read the Guardian gave a big cheer. America had its own Margaret Thatcher at last.

Sarah Palin and mischievous daughter at her elbow

Since then the Rottweilers of the Left have been out to savage her every thought and action, even her family is not out of bounds. Barack Obama went 15 points ahead in the polls. It looked like John McCain had made a game-over error of judgement.

But, just as you could never keep Margaret Thatcher down for more than a moment, back came the exuberant Palin with a speech and a performance that left the Republican Convention in paroxysms of delight.

A heartbeat from the Presidency? Bring it on!

Already, she has developed such momentum that quiet-man Obama and his grey Kinnochio sidekick haven’t a hope in Hades of stopping her. This Alaskan pipeline goes all the way to the White House.

I’ve been forecasting a John McCain win in Syntagma since February and, although I’m not claiming victory yet, I’m more confident than ever that it’s hovering over the bag.

The Clintons must be livid. Hillary may have met her Nemesis — the woman who will become America’s first female President. Poetic justice is washing over Washington.

Now what does this tell us about the plight of the British grey ghost, Gordon Brown?

He would never have done what McCain did this week: chance everything on one bold throw of the dice. Fortune favours the brave and Gordon was not born to break the bank at Monte Carlo.

In extremis, the gambler’s instinct is the only card he has left to play. Fail to deploy it and the party’s over. McCain played his deftly and now looks a good bet for Pennsylvania Avenue in January.

Brown could go with dignity, of course, but not with honour, as Charles Clarke suggested yesterday. He has blown whatever honour he had when he signed the country away to a foreign power, against the wishes of its people, and ratted on his promise of a referendum he knew he would lose.

A recent university study suggests that people who daydream are more creative than those who don’t. Their reveries make new and unusual connections in their minds, releasing many more possibilities for action. Accountant types who spend their time studying statistics and facts limit themselves to what has been prepared for them.

The fact is, Gordon Brown doesn’t do brown studies — an old term for a reverie. He’s no daydream believer, so his words and decisions always lack originality, zing and bounce.

John McCain revealed this week that he can wave his wand and make magic. He’s got his opponents in a spin and they know it. His gamble has paydirt written all over it.

Gordon Brown should sit at John McCain’s feet and seek the mojo that makes a man a leader.

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So the American primaries are over. No one can say they were bored.

All that remains of Julius Caesar

In the end a bruised but elevated Barack Obama triumphed deservedly over his street-fighting Moll opponent, Hillary Clinton. Whatever anyone thought of the outcome, it was a bravura spectacle on both sides.

Here’s a quick recap of what I posted here nearly four months ago – this is to allow you to assess Syntagma’s forecasting skills.

America’s Presidential election could be decided by which of the three big isms — racism, sexism and ageism — the country is least susceptible to. [...]

1. Do Americans want the Clintons back in the White House?
I would wager a big cigar they don’t.

2. Is John McCain too old?
The country that re-elected Ronald Reagan is not going to be put off by a man of 70.

3. Will America go with Obama’s left/liberal internationalist agenda?
Apart from a few white supremacists, I don’t think this election will turn specifically on race. Obama cuts across many traditional boundaries in the population and has an intellectual stature that suggests it will not. But in the campaign proper, his policies will be increasingly examined. [...]

In a year that’s made for the Democratic party, its two, admittedly impressive, candidates are likely to eliminate themselves by recent memories of past imperfections on the one hand, and an excessive zeal for the lost world of the sub-Marx master plan on the other. [...]

My guess is that [McCain] will win in a tight finish. But not so tight that we again become absorbed by the hanging chads of Florida.

Well, not too bad so far. We got the Democratic candidate right and I think a tight finish is almost guaranteed, especially as Obama lacks Hillary’s clout in the big swing states.

After the scintillating primary campaigns, I’m more certain than ever of my final prediction — that John McCain will be the next President of the United States. I believe Obama may be also … but in four or eight years.

Whenever I watch Obama speak, I’m reminded of a young Tony Blair before he became British Prime Minister, minus the prancing show pony act. The same certainties are there, the evangelistic language bordering on the biblical, the near-identical belief in the nostrums of left/liberalism.

Still to come for the young(ish) Senator from Illinois is the realization that none of these things work in the end. He should look at Labour Britain after 11 years of Blair and Brown. A wasteland of lost hopes and dreams as substandard politicians, drawn almost exclusively from the student activist class, recognize the awful truth: that life is too complicated to be micro-managed by government. Years of simplistic formulations driven by secondhand idealism, not truth, inevitably end in failure.

So who will be the new American Caesar?

During the coming campaign, I believe America will awaken to the fact that decisions have to be taken at the point of maximum competence — or as near it as possible. And that’s not by a government machine.

McCain may not be perfect, but he surely knows that to be true.