If Barack Obama becomes the 44th president on Tuesday, it will symbolize a tectonic shift from a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant United States to a multiethnic America, said The Sunday Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:

Nobody watching the climax of the US election campaign this weekend can be in any doubt that this is a dramatic and thrilling moment in American history. As it stands, it looks as if American voters will choose Barack Obama on Tuesday. In our view they will be making the right choice. There is a risk, of course. While we know a great deal about Obama's past, we know little of how he will act as president. And yet voters have to back their instinct and judge a candidate on his record and character. In this grueling campaign he has been determined, calm and measured - all important traits in a president. He has not made enemies needlessly and has learned fast on the stump, bringing in a seasoned team of advisers. He has also headed a superb electoral campaign and, in the process, outwitted two of the most formidable electioneering forces in American politics - the Republicans and the Clintons. But perhaps most important of all, Obama has that indefinable political magic - an ability to excite and inspire.

As he gets closer to the White House he has become more statesmanlike and measured, sounding less like a leftish protectionist and instinctive tax raiser and more like a potential president who knows he will have to restrain those pressures from within his party.

Of course the new president will face enormous challenges. The scale of the banking crisis, and the measures taken in the dog days of the Bush presidency, will leave the nation's finances hamstrung for years to come. Even if Obama is a two-term president, he will still be dealing with the financial legacy of 2008 in 2016.