Te Radar: The people have spoken, so no more oxygen - I'm coming home

HUMOUR

Loitering in a room where exhausted men appear on the verge of weeping is similar to finding yourself standing naked in front of children; you don't know what to say, where to look, or how to escape.

Despite the enthusiasm of those Democrats campaigning for John Kerry in the small town of Pahrump, Nevada, over the final week I couldn't shake the sense of impending calamity.

As the day of the election drew near the Democratic volunteers were upbeat.

In a last push, a busload of Californian Democrats arrived in the desert town to assist over the final weekend.

"We are going to flush the crap out of the White House and install some Johns," one man enthused optimistically.

The local Democrats were as delighted as Rodney Hide with John Tamihere's bank statements.

As the volunteers manned phones and knocked on doors the local Pahrumpians cooked food for everyone.

It seemed, however, to consist mainly of beans, which didn't seem the best thing to feed people confined in small rooms, in cars, or on buses.

One Californian woman was trapped on the doorstep of a house she was canvassing, cornered by a rather irascible hog.

Although she escaped unscathed, it seemed that for many of the Californians travelling to Pahrump was as much of a culture shock as finding themselves in Turkmenistan.

Watching Nevada's new-fangled touch-screen voting machines being set up, I examined the instructions. They seemed just simple enough to be considered complicated.

The predominantly elderly workers setting them up often gathered in flummoxed circles, looking from machines to manuals, to each other, and then back to the machines.

But on the day the people came. The young and the old. Alone. With friends. Children at their parents' sides.

And in the end, even though many may not have liked what they said, the people spoke.

All I could think was that with the result decided I could return home to a country where I can eat at a restaurant without having to look at myriad people with plastic oxygen tubes protruding from their noses and attached to industrial size oxygen tanks.

Of all the things I witnessed, from sordid campaign advertisements to orgiastic political rallies, one image seemed to be a summation of America.

On the final evening before the election I watched as a gnarled but sprightly 72-year-old ex-cowboy, a floppy-haired mid-50s Californian disillusioned Republican who drove to Nevada to help the Democrat campaign, and a young college grad from Pennsylvania, part of a contingent of young college grads to organise the Democratic campaign, work together to display a final and ultimately futile Kerry campaign banner.

Above them a mammoth illuminated casino sign alternated between advertising games of chance, and stating "Won this month! 2 cars and 6 tractors!"

Only in America.