Sylvia Patterson on election fever

America, the week before the election, in the middle of the credit crunch. What could the atmosphere possibly be like? Sent here for work, this week's column comes to you, then, as a sort of public-service postcard, as I snoop round Las Vegas attempting to discover how America's pulse is twitching.

Vegas itself, with the economic collapse for starters, you might imagine would be unrecognisable, desert tumbleweed blowing through the empty casinos and the hottest ticket in town one for the soup kitchens. In fact, it's more or less the same as it ever was, preposterous and pretending to look like ancient Rome in the 1970s. Yes, the construction of casino'resorts even more colossal than Ceasars Palace has gone a little quiet, and home foreclosures are now an actual tourist attraction, with bargain-seeking, first-time buyers boarding credit-crunch coaches to sift through the bankruptcy hot spots.

Mostly, though, people are suspending reality by continuing to spend, whether in the shopping malls housed inside the vast hotels or sat rigid for 18 hours at the slot'machine rows in the hotel casinos the size of football pitches, an experience rather like putting your head inside a huge electronic grid and asking Big Ben to pummel you continuously in the face. While wearing a billowing floral shirt, neon-lit deely-boppers and drinking strawberry daiquiris from enormous glasses the size of an Austrian flugelhorn.

These, then, are your standard American voters on a classic American holiday. All of them have an election opinion and almost all of it is about Barack Obama, whether from his own supporters or John McCain's supporters. Those in Obama's camp are strident, optimistic and romantic: he's "the only chance this country has of gaining some self-respect back", "the greatest political speaker I have ever heard in my lifetime" and "a politician for the working man, who cares about something other than his own power". And then there's the 42-year-old mother of two carrying around an Obama comment recently ripped from a newspaper: "You know there's a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit," Obama had said, "but I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit, the ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes; to see the world through the eyes of those who are different from us."

Momentarily, it is 1968 all over again and The Beatles are number one. Simultaneously, there is another version of 1968 seeping through the atmosphere with the widespread assumption that Obama "will definitely be assassinated, no question about it", or, at least, if he wins, "there'll be a serious attempt on his life within the first three months and then it'll all calm down".

The McCain supporters, meanwhile, are apoplectic, cynical, running on fear and fixated on money, convinced Obama "will destroy the free market", how distribution of wealth means giving money to workshy bums or, as one businessman had it, "50% of Americans earn so little they don't pay taxes, why should I pay for them to lay around?" A spectacularly massaged statistic in itself, for if you're earning so little you don't pay taxes, around $8950 in America, chances are you're less "laying around" and more cleaning a stairwell on a crack-beriddled housing project subsisting on boxes of Cheerios. Obama was now not only a "socialist" but a "communist", perhaps even some balaclava-wearing Marxist subversive not seen since the days of Che Guevara and should he win their beloved "Yoo Ess Ay!" will become "the new Republic of China". And he's not only a Muslim, which they definitely equate with being a terrorist, but possibly prone to summer holidays in a cave in an Afghan cliff-face taking tea with his chum bin Laden. Then there's the simple voice from everywhere, both sides and undecided which says, "I'm just not sure America is ready for a black president. Not yet."

Over on the fundraising Obama website, meanwhile, comes a message from Joe Biden: "We just learned that the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee had a $20 million cash advantage on October 15. That means we can expect to see a fierce blitz of negativity in the final days - so-called "robocalls," mail pieces, and TV ads filled with smears and false attacks. We can't let our opponents' low-road tactics prevail. To stand up to this last-minute spending spree, we need to step up our efforts. Make a donation of $5 or more before it's too late "

"If I were trying to define the major difference between the Americans and the British," mused Stephen Fry the other week, ruminating on his wonderfully warm TV road-trip through the States, "I think it's the attitude expressed in the phrase only in America'. And the Americans use this phrase all the time. It's about weirdness, eccentricity, bravery, originality, some kind of maverick oddity, something inventive and ingenious and extraordinary, something that makes you gasp and go wow!'. They're surprised by their own country. Whereas we are having our worst fears constantly confirmed about ours."

This Wednesday morning, then, when the most exhilarating, brutally fought and globally important American presidential election of our lifetime finally ends, we'll know if America has chosen to be brave, ingenious and extraordinary or if our worst fears have suddenly been confirmed. Either way, we'll all be waking up to a "Wow!"