NEW YORK, Nov 2: On the last Sunday before the elections, most Americans believe that never in living memory has an American election been more critical than the one this Nov 4.

A George Bush presidency, they maintain, has undermined the country and its ideals fundamentally.

They believe the Bush presidency has managed to run Republican party’s image both within and without United States to the lowest of low levels, unparallel in the history of polls.

In the national polls late on Sunday, Democrat Barack Obama led John McCain in everyone of them with experts across the length and breath of the United States predicting early landslide for Mr Obama with a few expressing trepidations of a Republican surprise upending the results as was seen in 2000 and 2004. The Bush Republican disaster begins at home, one expert writing in a magazine said. Even before taking into account whatever fantastically expensive plan eventually emerges to help rescue the financial system from Wall Street’s long-running pyramid schemes, the economic and fiscal picture is bleak.

During the Bush administration, the national debt, now approaching $10 trillion, has nearly doubled. Next year’s federal budget is projected to run a $500bn deficit, a precipitous fall from the $700bn surplus that was projected when Bill Clinton left office. Private-sector job creation has been a sixth of what it was under President Clinton. Five million people have fallen into poverty. The number of Americans without health insurance has grown by seven million, while average premiums have nearly doubled.

Meanwhile, the principal domestic achievement of the Bush administration has been to shift the relative burden of taxation from the rich to the rest. For the top 1 per cent of us, the Bush tax cuts are worth, on average, about a thousand dollars a week; for the bottom fifth, about a dollar and a half. The unfairness will only increase if the painful, yet necessary, effort to rescue the credit markets ends up preventing the rescue of our healthcare system, our environment and our physical, educational and industrial infrastructure.

The latest conservative propaganda reported in the mainstream news media as if it were fact goes like this: Whoever becomes the next president is going to be left with such a huge national debt and budget deficit, he won’t be able to enact any significant social legislation, like universal health care or tax cuts for the middle class or a national renewable energy programme, because he won’t have the money to pay for it.

In endorsing Senator Obama for the Presidency of the United States, the New York Times aptly noted: “Mr Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith.

The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. Ms Sarah Palin has also questioned millions of Americans’ patriotism, calling Republican-leaning states ‘pro-America’.

This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr Bush drive Mr McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency. The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing “robo-calls” and negative ads.

This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.

Mr Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.”