The Hartford Courant in 244 years has only endorsed a Democrat once. Today, guess what: it did it again. My readers are proof that I, a Republican and Reagan sub-cabinet officer, predicted this somewhat earlier, even before John McCain chose a running mate whom Colin Powell called ‘unqualified’ and the New York Times , not known for hyperbole, called ‘unfit’.

Ed Rollins, Ronald Reagan’s pollster, beat me to the punch. He said it ‘may’ be a landslide. I’m saying it without qualification. No one wants to be in the seat of the Chicago Tribune in 1948, saying John Dewey had won.

But polls are now vastly better. There is now no way McCain and the airhead can win.

The world has changed. Not just America. It’s not about Barack Obama being black. It’s about decency, hope and commitment. It’s about understanding the world as it is. It’s about putting the nation and the decent hopes of all mankind first, not one’s ambition.

john mccain Of course Obama is ambitious. But from the first, this truly miraculous leader has diagnosed our problems, done his homework, outsmarted the country’s supposedly unbeatable couple and then done the same to a veteran of the senate, a ‘national hero’ who supposedly had earned the presidency for five years squatting in a Vietnamese jail (heroism defined as endurance rather than courageous choice).

McCain came in near the bottom of his Academy class, Obama the top. Sarah Palin had to try five times to get through college. Obama ran the Harvard Law Review — you can’t get higher. Why wasn’t the choice obvious?

There’s a lot of resistance, but the signs are now overwhelming. In desperation, McCain merely smears when he should be trying to salvage his place in history. It’s too late for Palin. She’s toast. She could be impeached back in Alaska before the inauguration.

This isn’t wishful thinking anymore. Palin backfired. She has dragged down McCain, and even women are strongly for Obama. The polls show very few remaining groups in a majority for McCain.

'America is back'

The New York Times endorsement has changed everything. Its language was Lincolnian, appropriately enough. It starts, ‘Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.

This country needs sensible leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of these qualities.’ Indeed.

democrat american election obama 070108 03 The most important implication is for the world as a whole. It’s not just that the appalling damage of eight years will be reversed in an instant. Other countries will see that anyone can rise from anywhere to lead, if he or she is fit. Anyone can rise and make a difference.

And what a time for this! There has been no such crisis at least since 1962, or World War II. After Nov 4, what the boy president wants will be irrelevant. There will be no decision of consequence without the say-so of the president-elect. And wait for his inaugural speech.

I think, like the last great president, Franklin Roosevelt, he’ll have more than a wish list as soon as the networks confirm his win (early in the evening). I’m sure early on he’ll do what he’s barely done - speak to his fellow African Americans.

To rebuild their families, make nutrition a goal (no more Cokes for breakfast). Then he’ll tell the world, "America is back".

But he’ll also tell the world to take its own medicine. We caused the financial crisis but gone are the days when America’s cough caused the international flu. The world is sama sama now.

Globalisation took a high jump. A great French poet Paul Verlaine said it in 1916 - we’re all interconnected- but now it’s real.

The news just flashed that Obama has a 10 point lead in, of all states, Virginia, where I sit now. In three weeks I’ve met only one McCain supporter, the mother of an Iraqi war victim.

Of course I couldn’t tell her that he wouldn’t have fought, much less died, if Obama’s preference in 2002 had ruled.

He said then that the war would just be fly-paper for terrorists, a breeding ground. And a trillion dollars down the drain.

In 1952, a supporter of Governor Adlai Stevenson told the presidential candidate that every thinking person in the country supported him. "But I need a majority," he replied. Today, Obama has that, across the land. In Palin’s own state, small Alaska, the major newspaper has endorsed Obama.

Obama’s finest hour imminent

Sometime on the evening of Nov 4, an awesome preliminary shift will occur. Obama is already the most protected candidate the world has known. But when the networks proclaim him the president-elect and McCain concedes, watch the Secret Service.

Literally thousands will move into place, silently but not invisibly, to protect even more securely the president-elect, his family, the vice president-elect and his family. You will see a cordon sanitaire around every move of this now most precious national asset.

barrack obama 201008 01 By mid-January he will have the nuclear codes and will be followed wherever he goes by artillery, medical vans, and the usual mob of presidential hanger-ons.

Transition teams will move into every great department to dismantle the bureaucratic legacy of the failed past and bring on the new.

The scale of this transition will finally make clear what some of us have been saying for two years: nothing like this has ever happened in American history, a failed presidency with failed policies, the worst we’ve ever had, giving way to the most extraordinary possibilities for hope ever.

Obama’s greatest stump speech yet, his June primary speech claiming victory, said ‘our time has come,’ and indeed it has. This will be America’s finest hour since the Declaration of Independence — as my black taxi driver observed this morning.

PROF 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.