The amount of information in the United States on the contest for the White House is almost overwhelming. Former ODT staffer Zach Hosseini sorts through the morass to offer a personal view on the presidential race.
One of the most difficult tasks I've ever been charged with as a writer has been trying to sum up the 2008 US presidential election in 800 or so words.
I volunteered to write this column thinking I could chronicle a subject that has fascinated me so for a readership so near and dear to my heart.
Alas, I have already wasted 64 words.
This difficulty has less to do with my unlimited verbosity (I hope) than it does with the sheer magnitude and madness that is the contest between Barack Obama and John McCain.
For one, here in America we are constantly inundated with information.
Depending on what your television package is, you have no fewer than four 24-hour news channels devoted to picking apart every election issue from the candidate's body language to bodyguards.
This is in addition to the four major networks (NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox) that have their own set of heavy-hitting half-hour-long news programmes in the evenings.
And you might get varying information from each of these channels; sometimes they even might report things that totally conflict with each other.
Fox News serves as the Republican mouthpiece, and has faithfully functioned as the Soviet-esque lapdog public relations team for President George W. Bush.
MSNBC, which sunk to the bottom of the ratings as it stuck with antiquated journalism ideals such as "impartiality" and "objectivity", has taken a sharp turn left, serving up sarcastic and angry rebuttals of Republicans.
I will refrain from a dissertation about the death of journalism and tell you that one thing is clear as we in America find ourselves less than one week away from the November 4 election: Mr Obama has a healthy lead nationally and could be poised for a landslide.
Even Fox News admitted this.
How did we get here? Let's start with Senator McCain.
Mr McCain has been full of surprises during his run, thus keeping in line with his self-styled "maverick" tag.
He shocked the country when he selected little-known Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in August.
When the financial markets melted in September, he announced he was suspending his campaign, just days before his first debate with Senator Obama, to return to Washington to help push through the proposed government bail-out.
The McCain narrative has had him cast as bipartisan, an agent of change, a steady hand, a populist, an anti-tax hero and most recently, a McCarthy-esque crusader determined to expose Mr Obama as a socialist.
Frankly, Mr McCain has confused us.
He has had a problem from the very beginning: he had never been embraced by Christian conservatives.
This Evangelical base, energised by George W.
Bush in 2000 and 2004, was the kingmaker for Republicans at national level.
Mr McCain has never spoken comfortably about his relationship with God, more a prerequisite for approval by Evangelicals seemingly than a clean criminal record.
But now the far right is as excited as ever thanks to Governor Palin.
She shares their religious and social values.
She hunts, she's from a small town, she's anti-abortion, she's pro-gun.
She's George W. Bush with ovaries.
But a funny thing happened to America in the last four years.
The grandiose Bush/Reagan image of the US as a "Shining city upon a hill" has taken a battering as the economy has been crushed and our war in Iraq still persists after five and a-half years.
This withering of the classic American optimism is blamed on Mr Bush and the Republicans' abject failure in the last eight years.
Mr Bush, ovaries, or no ovaries, is not what America wants.
Enter Mr Obama, who despite his relative youth and lack of experience has made his case to the American people that he is the steady hand, with the intellectual clout to complement his first-class temperament.
Mr McCain and Ms Palin have made final flailing attacks on Mr Obama in the past month, asking "Who is the real Barack Obama?" The familiar refrain by the Republicans was supposed to raise fears about Mr Obama's ties to former domestic terrorist William Ayers, with whom the Illinois senator served on an educational committee in Chicago.
That attack has fallen flat in the US.
So, who is Barack Obama? Former secretary of state Colin Powell, a Republican, called Mr Obama a "transformational" figure and endorsed the Democrat.
Other notable McCain deserters include: Ken Adelman, policy analyst and former official in Ronald Reagan's administration; Christopher Buckley, author and columnist for the conservative magazine National Review; and Michael Smerconish, a conservative radio talk show host. On Monday, Mr Obama unveiled a speech titled "The Closing Argument" in Ohio, making his final push.
"In one week, we can choose hope over fear and unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo," Mr Obama said.
"That's what's at stake. That's what we're fighting for . . . if you will stand with me and fight with me and give me your vote, then I promise you . . . we will win this general election.
"And together we'll change this country and we will change the world."
Here's hoping we choose hope.
