Johann Hari writes about the opportunity to elect a US president who for the first time in nearly a 100 years that won’t be in thrall to either big oil companies or Wall Street.

Is it possible to empty a presidential election of all political content? The economy is crashing, the climate is unravelling, Iraq and Afghanistan are haemorrhaging – and the debate in the mainstream US media about who should be the most powerful man in the world was fixated for weeks on burbling trivia. Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig! (No, he didn’t.) Obama wanted to tell toddlers about sex! (No, he wanted to warn them about paedophiles). The critics of Palin are sexist! (McCain voted against the Equal Pay Act. That’s sexism.) Read the full article on Hari’s blog.