We shouldn't assume that Obama will walk it in November. The United States has a very conservative mindset. Just look at the past 50 years of presidential elections. In 1960, the youthful, charismatic and photogenic John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by only 100 000 votes - inconsequential in American terms. Nixon, in turn, narrowly defeated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and then trounced the progressive candidate, George McGovern, in 1972.

In 1976, despite the Watergate scandal and the almost fatal wound this inflicted on the American psyche, Jimmy Carter only narrowly defeated Gerald Ford, a president cruelly satirised as someone who "couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time".

You may have noticed an exception - Lyndon Johnson's defeat of conservative candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 - but then again the nation was still grieving for its assassinated president the previous year.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the first of two landslides - no contest on either occasion. In 1988 George Bush Senior managed, successfully, to portray his opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a liberal. Perhaps the pivotal moment of the election debate was when the hapless Dukakis continued to voice his opposition to the death penalty even when asked if he'd feel the same way if his wife, Kitty, was raped and murdered.

Bill Clinton only won in 1992 by being a defiantly middle of the road candidate, a new type of Democrat. And, of course, president Bush won on two successive occasions despite facing two - palpably - capable and intellectually superior candidates, Al Gore and John Kerry.

So, here's why, contrary to what I know most Europeans want, I predict a narrow victory for John McCain. Most Americans dislike left-leaning candidates - it's a country where, unlike in Europe, they don't despise winners, even those who ostentatiously flaunt their wealth or those who inherit riches. In the United States, the dispossessed simply look at the rich and wonder how they can become wealthy, too.

This unfettered capitalism makes anyone who's seen as even remotely liberal pretty much unelectable. Second, although Obama has run a very different campaign from another ill-fated black candidate - Jesse Jackson in 1984 - he'll still attract the support of anti-establishment black radicals simply because they have nowhere else to go. He'll now spend months having to disown comments by supposed supporters, undermining his whole campaign in the process.

Obama has also equivocated over Iran, antagonising the influential pro-Zionist constituency. Although the Jewish vote may be exaggerated - and in any case predominantly Democrat - his hitherto uncertain stance over the Middle East could earn him powerful enemies. McCain will lacerate Obama's stance on Iran in the debates - and deservedly so. Until very recently Obama mentioned Iran in the same breath as Venezuela and Cuba.

Such a view is simply unrealistic. As long as Iran threatens to obliterate another sovereign state - Israel - it should remain an international pariah. Obama's pusillanimous foreign policy may please many in Europe, the same people who haven't grasped the momentous times in which we live, the same people who thought Tariq Ali's Clash of Fundamentalisms was a good read.

We shouldn't necessarily assume that McCain's age rules him out either. He's a war hero, someone who survived torture at the hands of the Vietcong. That plays well with voters. Europeans and Americans differ greatly in terms of the characteristics they admire. Americans tend to view intellectuals with a certain disdain. Doubters should look at Bush. He, shrewdly, painted himself as a simple soul who trusted instinct above brain power, a strategy that reaped dividends.

So battle lines are clear. McCain the war hero - the robust defender of American values - versus Obama, hero of the liberal elite and black radicals, Islamophiles and, sadly, neo-Nazis who probably want to see him win and then assassinated in order to trigger a race war. Worst of all for Obama's case, he's supported by Carter, whose presidency became a byword for incompetence and weakness. Are you still so confident of an Obama victory? Put your money on the table!