Harry Truman, 33rd American president, often and proudly displayed the Chicago Tribune headline the day after the 1948 election: ‘Dewey Wins’, referring to the near-universal prediction that the New York governor would win the White House.

Polling has come a long way since then. But it didn’t even need polls in 1948. New York Times articles repeatedly noted the growing crowds for the president and had to rationalise the slim pickings Dewey was getting.

By 1980, when the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, ran for reelection, his pollster revealed in Air Force One three days prior to the vote that he had already lost, the president and First Lady Roslyn wept.

Ronald Reagan came in with an unexpected landslide. My wife and I had dined lengthily thinking it would be late evening before Reagan won. As we left the hotel at 9pm, we saw the ticker tape that Carter had already conceded to the Reagan juggernaut.

It’s all about the ‘Big Mo’ - momentum - ever since. Of course pollsters can’t predict the unforeseeable. Anything can happen. But they should be able to discern the difference between a bubble, like Sarah Palin’s, when she hit the big stage a month ago, and a structural shift, as we are witnessing now.

Structural shift in American politics

For weeks, pundits have pondered ‘why can’t he close the deal’? Why can’t so evidently more intelligent a candidate, with so much bigger a base, pull ahead in the polls? Well, Barack Obama has done it.

democrat american election obama 070108 03 It doesn’t take long to reveal the vapidity of an untrained Alaskan governor, but it would take a long time to reverse the effect of the biggest financial crisis, in scale, in US history. It’s only a month to go, and it is hard to envisage what could be a bigger event than the financial crisis, from which Obama is manifestly gaining.

Down deep, John McCain knew the earlier polls were right enough, so he tried to break all the eggs and make a new omelet. That’s the only possible reason for naming a person whom he must keep away from the press in order to prevent a far bigger shift to the opposition.

By dramatically lowering expectations for the veep debate, the Republicans have tried to discount gaffes on Sarah’s part. But Americans can’t always be fooled. She can’t cut the mustard, to use an American mid-west expression.

The economic crisis will ease, of course. The House of Representatives’ new legislation has done the job. Why were they so ‘irresponsible’? They understood the gravity of the crisis, but winning back home was slightly more relevant.

The grass-roots rebellion against Wall Street had turned into a tsunami. Those in the most affected districts had to vote against the package. Now that those votes are registered against the bailout, they can vote responsibly and close this deal.

They can brag to their constituents that they stood up to Wall Street and achieved fundamental revision in the package. The markets will shout it from the treetops. As I have repeatedly written here, this is a sectoral crisis, solutions are available, and they are being applied. The new legislation writes in stiffer terms for the go-go lenders who caused it all.

Financial crisis benefitting Obama

Does this mean McCain can still win? No, the ‘big Mo’ is like a fast-moving glacier, not a one-person sprint or even a marathon. Polling showed a toss-up a month ago, especially because so many voters harbored deep misgivings over electing an African-American. People have listened and looked more now. When momentum shifts, it takes months to reverse it.

The economic crisis fundamentally benefitted Obama and the fears that the crisis sparked will remain for years to come. Cute comments like ‘lipstick’ and ‘pit bulls’ can only shift the moment but it cannot reverse the direction of the iceberg.

democrat american election hillary 070108 03 Only the threat of a world cataclysm can do that, and such might cut both ways: voters then might prefer an old hand like McCain’s but wonder if the 72-year old’s vice presidential candidate’s fingers should be the ones on the nuclear trigger if the old man was incapacitated. It turns out she couldn’t even see Russia from her state.

Obama amidst all the clamour has remained cool. He didn’t bother to rise even when Hillary Clinton alluded to his possible assassination last May. He knew it would work against Hillary when people thought about it.

He knew McCain would be his opponent and he wanted to show voters that however many rotten eggs were thrown his way, he would remain steady.

McCain, the old hand, has shown that he is willing to risk the national interest for his campaign - of course by his theatrics over the first debate with Obama, but more fundamentally by putting a person on his ticket that is, by every test, unqualified.

W SCOTT THOMPSON is a national security expert who served four American Presidents and is a professor emeritus at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is the author or editor of 13 books on world political issues and resides in Washington, Bali and Manila.