It's the time....

......says the frontsheet of this week's Economist and I am happy to take up the theme.

It's the time for Barack Obama as Americans vote for their next President with polling concluding on Tuesday. Americans will hopefully forgive Timelord expressing his opinion on what at the end of the day is a matter for them. After all they have a vote and I do not.

Regular readers of this blog will remember that I came out for Mr Obama, as the saying goes, in December last year. And nothing since has made me change my mind.

He does not wear a vest underneath his shirt with a huge letter S emblazoned on it. He cannot climb walls and walk on ceilings like Spiderman. He has made his mistakes. He is not a magician.

Yet he has the rare quality of being able to inspire in an age of ever increasing cynicism about public life. He had the courage to speak out about the madness of the invasion of Iraq from the beginning and is criticised by his opponents for wanting to share the wealth of his country which to their eyes amounts to the unpardonable sin of socialism.

And for all it is fashionable in many quarters to sneer about America it is remarkable that a black man of mixed parentage should be at the threshold of the White House. Something perhaps even beyond the dreams of Martin Luther King.