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BARACK OBAMA deserves to win the United States presidential election tomorrow because he is temperamentally more prepared and able than John McCain for the immense challenges of the next four years, has the better policies to meet them, and has undoubtedly won the crucial arguments over this long campaign. The election concerns the rest of the world nearly as much as the United States, considering its impact on international political and economic wellbeing. In a time of profound change, Mr Obama would be better able than Mr McCain to give leadership and respond to the critical views about the US role that have swelled up over the last eight years.

Whoever wins tomorrow faces a daunting domestic and international agenda. It is dominated by the financial and economic crisis that has engulfed the last months of George Bush's administration and which will continue to preoccupy the new president. Already his successor's policies have been framed by the sheer expense of rescuing the US banking system and preventing the economic recession tipping over into a 1930s-style depression. A failure on either count will indelibly mark the victor's next four years - and so will a successful effort to tackle them.