The World

It is just a few hours since Obama was elected – and already events are taking on a retrospective aura of inevitability. The election of the first black president is a historic moment and so it is tempting to believe that it was somehow written in the stars. Obama himself liked to suggest to supporters that “we have a righteous wind at our back”.

The fatalists argue that Bush was so unpopular, the economy so bad, the McCain campaign so confused and the Obama campaign so brilliant, that the Democrat was simply bound to win. I don’t believe it. Don’t forget that shortly after the Republican convention, McCain was actually briefly in the lead. A Republican victory was far from inconceivable.

So what happened? It was not fate that intervened – it was Katie and Dick.

Katie Couric’s CBS interviews with Sarah Palin punctured the Palin bubble. McCain’s running mate turned from being a big asset into a major liability. Tina Fey of Saturday Night Live then applied the coup de grace, by turning Palin into a laughing stock.

Then Lehman Brothers collapsed under the disastrous leadership of Dick Fuld, who quickly became a poster child for greed and economic injustice. I was with a friend who works for Obama, on the day Lehman’s folded. He quickly grasped what was happening – “Terrible for America,” he said, “But great for our campaign”. McCain’s inept response to the financial crisis made sure that Obama’s advantage on economic issues quickly became insurmountable.

And the rest really is history.