corruption on Wall Street". Alone of the four candidates, she spoke to the fury and fear of Main Street America about the $700bn bail-out, now approved by the US Senate and probably soon to be passed by the House of Representatives after the requisite number of Republicans have been bribed or cowed into submission.

The bail-out - not yet quite a done deal - gives $700bn to the big moneymen in Wall Street to smuggle into safe harbours, while making the US Treasury the debt collector from middle and working-class Americans unable to pay their mortgages and facing foreclosure.

Both presidential candidates - Obama, the salesman of hope and McCain the maverick - voted in the US Senate for the plan drafted by Treasury Secretary Paulson, formerly the CEO of Goldman Sachs. So did Senator Joe Biden. Palin is the only one not inconvenienced by a Yes to bail-out, and was therefore able to denounce the "toxic mess" on Wall Street.

If McCain had issued similar denunciations

in his debate, and campaigned against the bail-out across the last ten days in Washington and voted No in the Senate, his campaign would not now be in a truly desperate situation.

Obama doesn't have to say much. Americans are living through the last months of an eight-year Republican presidency and the experience has proved harrowing. Crucial 'battleground states' like Pennsylvania are tilting decisively towards the Democrats.

Will Palin's performance last night - victorious in the first 45 minutes, adequate in the second half - stop McCain's slide? Almost certainly not. The Republican presidential candidate is beleaguered not only by his awful performance on the bail-out, but also by questions about his health. Nothing Palin could have done last night will rehab McCain on these matters, though he has two more debates with Obama in which he can try to repair the damage.

On present trends, the McCain-Palin ticket is doomed, just as the Republican presidential campaign of another Arizonan