It has been an extraordinary political war. Conventional wisdoms and long-standing assumptions have flown out the window. The final choice is remarkable: a young, ‘cool’ and detached African American who abjures commitment versus a decided, indeed hot-tempered, maverick whose entire essence is commitment. Long gone is the ‘inevitable candidate’ whose gender is now represented on the opposition ticket, as a vice-presidential candidate no one came close to predicting.

Along the way, the political process has been energised. Unlike the caucus system in Australia, which restricts the choice of leader to elected members of parliament, the American process has been, well, American: wide open, breezy and totally unpredictable. As against those 226 parliamentarians in Canberra who chose the leaders of all of Australia’s political parties, nearly sixty million Americans voted in the 2008 primary elections to choose their leaders, a greater engagement of the citizenry than in any previous presidential contest. And they chose unconventional outsiders – on both sides.