Being in America during this election campaign is a peculiar experience. It is possible to forget that the country already has a President and, indeed, that he will be in charge for another two-and-a-half months.

But, then, however much the rest of the world might disdain George W. Bush, he is nowhere - possibly not even in the caves of Pakistan or the badlands of Iraq - so despised as here. The keenness to see him out of office and into the history books is so intense that much of America has, mentally, already done it.

A torrentially wet day in New York drove me into a cinema to watch W, Oliver Stone’s film about the 43rd president. Mr Stone was at Yale with Mr Bush so understands his type and where he came from: the film, made by an ideological opponent, is strangely sympathetic.

It has attracted mixed reviews, not necessarily because people think it is too understanding of the outgoing President, but because many Americans simply don’t want to be reminded of his existence.

John McCain certainly doesn’t - Mr Bush is nowhere near the Republican campaign, for which he would be the final kiss of death.

The Bush that comes out of Stone’s film is a fair representation of the real thing: a rather foolish man, eventually (under the influence of God) motivated by the right considerations, but whose many weaknesses of character cause him to make some bad choices of colleagues, and then to allow them to dominate him and use his term of office as an experiment in a new world order.

There is no mention of all the domestic disasters over which the Bush Administration has presided, and which has left its economy the swamp of a disease that has since infected the rest of the world: but then there doesn’t need to be. The charge sheet is long enough as it is.

In some ways, the Bush story is a conventional one, and Stone plays it reasonably straight.

The combination of a life of privilege, birth into a dynasty of politicians, an intimidatingly successful father, the ready availability of money, no apparent need to work for a living and a sense of entitlement about political power were the beginning of the corruption of George W. Bush.

He is depicted as having been unemployable save for his father’s contacts and his father’s money opening doors for him. He could stick at nothing and became a drunk before being born again into Christianity.

With little grasp of any political issue, he was smuggled into politics. With some pretty odd traits of character, he became President, almost by accident.

That defective character drove him to make key appointments from among men who served his father: but then his father was a war hero, an experienced politician, a man of authority. Men who had served him now conspired to make his son serve them.

The film depicts Dick Cheney as a brooding, contemptuous zealot; Donald Rumsfeld as an elderly clot; Condoleezza Rice as a twittering, useful idiot; Colin Powell as a deeply compromised moral coward.

Their strings are pulled by a homunculus-like Karl Rove, and the conspiracy to declare war on Iraq on the basis of a fiction becomes a matter of inevitability. It is hard to protest that any of this is that far from the truth.

The tragedy of Bush is that this was a man presented, after 9/11, with the greatest opportunity for leadership, and the most distinct need to deal with an aggressor, than anyone in the White House had had since Roosevelt in 1941.

He acted as only a man with his deficiencies of character and personality could: making bad choices and bad judgments.

It seems absurd to talk about a legacy except in ironic terms (and Americans don’t do irony): and, barring some astonishing upset, a Democratic president in the Oval Office from next January.

Everybody jumps to the Democrat’s tune

America doesn’t have a 1949 Wireless Telegraphy Act, which allegedly ensures that British broadcasters remain impartial (something both the BBC and Channel 4 have stretched to beyond the limits).

There is one television channel that gives the pro-McCain line - Fox News - and several hundred others preparing for the coming of the new Messiah.

There is the odd newspaper that gives Mr McCain a fair crack of the whip, but the vast majority make no pretence of being even-handed towards him in their news coverage.

Having always believed in a free market in ideas, I can’t see the problem with this: though when you add on the predominance of websites cheering for Obama, it does become something of an avalanche.

One editor shamefacedly admitted the other day that the media were full of liberals, so the pro-Obama stance was inevitable.

I still think we should try the same arrangements at home, though: we have a vast public sector to mop up many of our liberals, so maybe conservatism would stand a chance at home.

Don’t be fooled by Hillary on the stump

Bill and Hillary Clinton have been stumping the country this week to do their bit for Mr Obama, the 42nd President himself sharing a platform with the anointed, and associating himself very closely with him and his supposedly impending glory.

Now it looks as though Mr Obama has won, it is a typically shrewd Clinton move to ensure that their dynasty is tarred with the brush of the imminent victory. Do not underestimate the cynicism of these people.

Since Mr Obama might be president until 2016, when Mrs Clinton will be nearly the same age as John McCain, this may look selfless. But we know what Mrs Clinton really thinks: that some madman could well shoot President Obama. Good ol’ Joe Biden would be a comical president.

Hillary would be there in 2012 to restore order, with the added blessing that neither she nor her loathesome husband had done anything to impair the Obama victory.

Think about it: they certainly are.

Another woman with her eye on the prize

It’s not just Hillary who still has one rather tasteless eye on 2012. A group of prominent Republicans is scheduled to meet in Virginia next Wednesday - if John McCain loses, of course - to discuss ways of keeping Sarah Palin in the game until the next election.

Media bias has helped pass over the fact that Mrs Palin is hugely popular in much of middle America: here in the media village of Obamamaniacal New York the quickest way to get a laugh is to mention any sort of regard for her political skills.

Come what may on Tuesday, we haven’t heard the last of her. But it makes one feel sorry for the Americans, for whom the start of the 2012 campaign is now only three days away.

Tough on crime, tough on expenditure

It is a paradox of New York that this utterly Democratic city keeps electing Republicans, or metaphorical ones in the case of the present mayor, Michael Bloomberg (an independent since last year), to run it.

Like his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, Mr Bloomberg has done a superb job. The city is clean, safe, well ordered, efficient. Everything works. Riding the subway - something I felt distinctly queasy about doing even during the day 20 years ago - is a far superior activity to taking the Tube.

Mayors here have more power than those at home, but there are two big lessons for government that our rulers simply refuse to take: if you want to make a city work, then get really tough with criminals, and have someone in charge who hates spending money.

Zero tolerance really has worked here: and Mr Bloomberg, like Mr Giuliani, holds himself to account about the way in which citizens’ dollars are spent.

There is no hidden agenda. Would that be so impossible for us to achieve at home?

McCain should have beaten Bush in 2000

So we come to the big question: can John McCain win on Tuesday? He can, but you would be unwise in the extreme to put the house on it.

Barack Obama is ahead in states the Democrats never win. Mr McCain himself has but a small lead in his own home state, Arizona.

His tragedy, and indeed America’s, was that he didn’t secure the nomination in 2000, when George W. Bush won it, with the consequences of which we are all too well aware.

It is premature to have an inquest, but I remain convinced of one thing: a McCain defeat will have little or nothing to do with Sarah Palin, whose appeal to a largely silent majority has been rendered invisible by the arrogant sexism and snobbery of the media here.

Mr McCain himself has been simply no match for the charisma of Mr Obama. Despite a heroic effort, he cannot undo the fact that he is from the party of Mr Bush.

I’m not sure any Republican could have won against Mr Obama and his bottomless pit of dollars: Mr McCain deserves credit for a hell of a try.

‘Early voting’ will soon cross the pond

We may have postal votes in the United Kingdom, but here they have something called "early voting".

It is thought that 12 per cent of Americans have already voted - which, given a 50 per cent turnout last time, could be a quarter of the total.

You can do it in supermarkets, gas stations, even - in Nevada - gambling dens, where, having cast your ballot, you can play the fruit machines.

Is this really a good idea? What if either candidate were to be outed for some hideous personal or political indiscretion between now and Tuesday?

I foresee the inevitability of this translating to England, with booths opening in Tesco the minute a general election is called.

Mind you, if we were all to arrange to go out and vote at once, causing politicians to realise that there is absolutely no point in campaigning, that might actually be quite wonderful.