It's really similar to the last federal election we had in Australia -- polls running strongly for the centre-left party for a long while before the election, with a large electoral movement for change.

Australia also lacks the prominent hard right wing of the US, or at least the evangelical christians and gun lobby stay out of the way of the mainstream media here.

On a personal note, it was pretty clear even in Australia what a disaster Bush has become, and how incompetent the Republican party has been. If I had been in the US, I would have dropped everything to volunteer for the democrat campaign, no matter who was nominated!

You should check out the NewsWeek articles on 'Secrets of the 2008 campaign

Basically, Obama was disciplined and thoughtful, had a strategic plan that extended well into the future for the entire campaign, and got a lot of smart people who were frustrated by Republican incompetence and partisanship on board. He listened to them and went with their best ideas.

McCain flailed around wildly, without long term planning and had to give in to vested GOP interests at various important turning points.

You think journalism is dead because the two candidates got different press coverage? That's because the news media was paying attention. If the Olympic games altered the results to make it seem like mismatched competitors were much closer than they actually were, that would be a travesty.

Given all the material that has come out in the aftermath, I don't think you can plausibly say that McCain/Palin operated a functional campaign. If the news coverage had been 'more balanced' and you found out after the election that they were incompetent, wouldn't that indicate that journalism had failed?