In the last few days before the election, however, elements from his past threatened to derail him, when his quotes about Hitler, from George Butler's book proposal, surfaced in the Times.
Since the election, prominent elements in the conservative movement have conceded that the GOP must soften its hard-line positions on immigration if it is to regain the level of support it once enjoyed among Latino voters.
"The AMA took a set of policies to the election campaign, supporting elements of Labor policy leading into the election," he said.
It is quite possible that if he wins the election, more hawkish elements of his party will restrain his reflationary impulses.One worry, however, is that he is already on record as saying he would appoint a more like-minded governor than Mr Shirakawa in April in other words, his man, not the BOJ's.
Yet since the election of George W Bush, an element of liberal wish fulfilment has haunted Martin Sheen's benign West Wing leadership, a sense that this is how America should be being run.
The election calendar adds one more element to the Democrats' rare upper hand in a tax fight.
And yet it is a crucial element in the election debate over Britain's future in the EU.
"The biggest unknown element in the election is whether or not he can achieve a relaunch that's different from the primary experience," said Mark Penn, a Democratic pollster and onetime adviser to Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The election has introduced another disruptive element: presidential candidates who are more concerned with winning primary votes in Iowa and South Carolina than in getting a deal passed in Washington.
They could be especially informative to betting markets, serving as a better anchor against which hard-to-quantify elements about the election could be weighed.
