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Yet, to ignore this subject completely, never to mention in print what so many are thinking, is to miss something important. Only against this dark background of dread can you appreciate the full irresponsibility of the turn that the McCain-Palin campaign has taken toward attacking Mr. Obama's character, biography and patriotism – attacks that, in other contexts, we would not hesitate to describe as “character assassination.” The charge made by Sarah Palin that he has been “palling around with terrorists”; the robocalls associating him with “domestic terrorist” William Ayers; the insinuation that he is alien, un-American or even anti-American, rhyming Obama with Osama; the absence of instant rebuke when some idiot at a Palin rally cries out “Terrorist!” or even “Kill him!” (Okay, she probably didn't hear it. But was she stirring them up against him? You betcha. Did she spell out the limits of responsible debate? Not that I ever heard.) Palin supporters might retort: This is America, not namby-pamby Europe. We fight tough and we fight to win. But more responsible Republicans disagree. They argue that, if you really put “country first” – John McCain's campaign motto – you should not travel this road and risk stirring those demons. It's no accident that Mr. Obama was given Secret Service protection unusually early in the primaries. Watching Colin Powell's measured and eloquent endorsement of Mr. Obama, many will have recalled that one widely reported reason Mr. Powell himself did not run for president was his wife's fear that he would be assassinated. No serious analyst would dispute that the threat to Mr. Obama, however effective his Secret Service protection, is greater than it would be to a white candidate.

Of course, the nutters, xenophobes and racists are out there anyway. The point is that no one should ever be able to claim, with even a shadow of plausibility, that the McCain-Palin campaign has given them even a hint of encouragement. I feel it important to record that I have heard several white Republicans say, with real feeling, what a great thing it would be for the United States to have a black president. “It would be electrifying,” former secretary of state James Baker said on CNN, before hastening to add that he was Republican and therefore backing Mr. McCain.

This criticism of the nasty turn taken by the McCain-Palin campaign would lose some of its force if the Obama campaign had been launching comparable attacks on the character and biography of the Republican candidates. The Obama camp has done its share of negative campaigning, and factcheck.org finds that the candidate himself has sometimes misrepresented Mr. McCain's policy positions. But he has never resorted to such lowdown personal attacks. In the last presidential debate, he even heroically refrained from questioning Ms. Palin's qualifications to be president – passing up a sitting duck, if ever there was one. His quiet message was: Let the American people judge. So the McCain-Palin campaign has been unilaterally playing with fire.

The stakes in this election grow higher by the day. It feels like watching a poker game with huge piles of chips accumulating on the table. Both the potential loss and potential gain are huge. On the upside is not just the symbolic breakthrough of electing the first African-American president – and a child of the world carrying with him the hopes of the world. It's also the arrival in the world's most important job of someone who has the potential to do it very well. Not the best candidate for president. That was Bill Clinton: a campaigner of genius, at once folksy and intellectual. But good at the actual job.

I did not always think this. At the beginning of the year, I still thought Hillary Clinton had the edge over Mr. Obama for knowledge and experience. But Mr. Obama has gained stature through every challenge. For a start, he has shown amazing stamina and strength. Due to the long drawn-out primary contest with Ms. Clinton, he has been campaigning for nearly two years non-stop. Through all the ups and downs of the campaign, and the financial crisis of recent weeks, he has been cool as a cucumber and steady as a rock. Stamina, strength, coolness under pressure and calmness under fire: These are qualities we'd like to see in a president.

In the debates, he was dignified, well-informed and grown-up, making a grimacing Mr. McCain look like a temperamental youngster. He greeted the old fighter pilot's attacks with an ironical smile that visibly drove Mr. McCain nuts. He has the kind of cryptic detachment that is an asset to any chairman. Personally, he seems centred and rooted. You feel this man knows who he is. Not because he always has known, like the heir to “a long line of McCains,” but because for a long time he didn't, and worked it out for himself the hard way, through the long search recorded in the autobiographical Dreams from My Father. He has, so to speak, the rootedness of the uprooted.

He has also cut some of the waffle that we heard earlier in the campaign, when he tended to give long meandering answers to short questions. On policy, he has demonstrated a clear intellectual grasp of the issues, an ability to absorb and synthesize expert advice, and a consistent focus on a few strategic priorities: the economic condition of the middle class, health care, education, energy.

Republicans charge him with being of the left, “liberal,” and hell-bent on introducing “socialism” to the United States. In truth, it's on George Bush's watch that government deficits have soared, the national debt has doubled, and now we may see a partial nationalization of some banks. But it's certainly true that Mr. Obama is more comfortable with a larger role for government in supporting provision of the basic necessities for every citizen, public goods such as transport infrastructure, and a Keynesian or New Deal-style stimulus to a floundering economy. This does not make him a socialist in any rational use of the word. After two terms of an Obama presidency, the U.S. model of democratic capitalism might be slightly closer to the Canadian or West European models – but it would still remain democratic capitalism.

After the last debate, some of the instant-reaction pundits on CNN complained that he had been “professorial.” (What have they got against professors?) Then the polling came in, and it turned out that, by a large majority, undecided voters rather liked professorial. After eight years of “the kind of guy you'd want to drink a beer with” (W.), maybe someone who showed a clear understanding of complex issues (for example, what the hell's happening to my life savings) would not be so bad.

Without counting his chickens before they hatch, Mr. Obama is already preparing his personnel lists and policy options for government, determined to make a better start to his first term than Bill Clinton did 16 years ago. With every week, my respect for him and my hopes of him have grown.

Of course, you never know until you know. Will he be bold enough? Can he make the unwieldy machinery of Washington, including his own party's representatives in Congress, work effectively to realize his strategic goals? But everything he has shown us this autumn suggests he has the potential to be a very good president, perhaps even a great one.

These are some of the reasons why no American election since 1932 has had such a deep downside of fear and such a high upside of hope.