As we speak (well, as I type on a laptop under an awning in the garden in the pouring rain and you read), history appears to be grinding towards an inexorable conclusion: in November, Barack Obama will become President of the United States of America. Should this occur he will be - as you are, unquestionably, aware - the first ever non-white US President. This is no mean feat for a country whose three psychosocio-cultural turning points were a) Victoria Principal's hair in Dallas, b) economic independence from Britain being funded by industrial-scale African-American slavery and c) the invention of the Whopper.

Clearly, it would do the country some good to have a non-white president for a spell. It would subtly rebalance international power-structures. It would allow America - an empire that now looks close to cultural exhaustion, after just 60 years of dominance - to reinvent itself. Perhaps most importantly of all, it would act as a springboard for a frankly poor, straight-to-DVD Eddie Murphy movie, in which he plays a jive-talkin', pimp-rollin' playa-president, in a project entitled, perhaps, The Black House. There is a dim part of our minds, raised by Hollywood, which craves the sight of a newly elected black president celebrating his inaugration by ordering in soul food, cranking up the Commodores' Brick House and shouting “Get on down. And that's an order!” at an uptight, white chief-of-staff.

Let's face it - we're not going to see Obama doing that. He'll spend his first night in the White House knocking up an authentic Vietnamese stir-fry and listening to Alicia Keyes, quietly, while his wife opens a bottle of Tokay and writes thank-you notes. But then again - maybe he won't. Maybe Obama won't make it to the White House, after all. For while there's many a slip twixt cup and lip, there's also much hocus-pocus between “candidate” and “POTUS”. Obama could, still, fail in his quest. He could default on his manifest destiny, after all. For while Obamamania rages all around us - 200,000-strong crowds in Berlin, the front pages of newspapers around the world - this enthusiasm is based, let us be truthful, on us not knowing much about him at all. More than 90 per cent of the people who support him would, if push came to shove and they had to explain why, say: “He's just this noble, black guy, who looks a little bit like he's wearing eyeliner.” The danger is, then, that between now and November, we suddenly learn a bad, rogue fact about Obama. Something that means we stop being able to project all this delirious, over-hopeful JFK stuff on to his seductively blank canvas and start actually getting to know the man, instead. Something like:

1.Obama releases a viral “getting-to-know-me” video on YouTube, showing his unique idea of “down-time”, and entitled “Obamming Around”. In it, he wears a stained pair of trackie bottoms, plays Grand Theft Auto for 16 hours a day and takes us through the construction methods of the infamous “Barack Stack Sandwich”, a snack notable for being a) more than 6in high, even after the Pringles have been mercilessly crushed down into pulp, and b) the peanut butter being spread not with a knife, but with Obama's finger. “You'll see I'm not all ‘constitutional reform' this and ‘standard-bearer for a generation of despairing liberals' that,” Obama promises, putting on his beer-can hat and riding around a deserted car lot on a tiny tricycle.

2.A sex scandal. It's the classic way to derail a presidential campaign - think Gary Hart, Grover Cleveland, Brock Adams, Gary Condit. The only problem with an Obama sex-scandal would be that, if the world is to be honest with itself, it fancies Obama. While a sex scandal would initially put his campaign into difficulty, it would also - as details came out - work as some manner of titillating Obama-porn, which everybody would, secretly, enjoy. And, indeed, use to fuel their Obama-love even more. Unless the affair was truly sordid. Something as distasteful as Obama logging on to Real World - then having cyber-sex with the Dragon Princess on top of Thunderfist Mountain. With little speech-bubbles that read: “Let's do it CENTAUR-STYLE!”

3.One notable component of the Right's anti-Obama campaigning has been constant, disingenuous commenting on Obama's “mixed cultural heritage”. With a Kenyan Muslim father, a white American mother - and, most exotically of all, a stepgrandmother in Bracknell, Berkshire - dimmer commentators have been “confused” as to “what Obama really is”. In a moment of peevish vexation, Obama decides to do a PowerPoint presentation on his exact ethnicity - using a pie-chart to demonstrate precise percentage points. “My suits are white - but I never have a breakfast that's less than 80 per cent ghetto,” Obama says, making a point of ill-advised subtlety, confusing the electorate and subsequently chalking up the biggest defeat in presidential history.

4.In a rare moment of non-nobleness, Obama deals a low blow to his Republican opponent John McCain - referring to how squeaky his voice is, compared with Obama's own. “I hear he's big in New Squawk, Shrilladelphia and Tennesqueak,” Obama says - going on to hum Lee Marvin's Wandrin' Star in a deep baritone.

5.Obama breaks the unwritten rule of US politics and calls time on America's ingrained obesity denial. “You just didn't fall over some fatness and get it all over you”, he says, to a crowd of huge-bottomed policemen in Chicago. “You all went to Wal-Mart, and spent all of George W. Bush's tax-cuts on Squirt Cheese, Laffy Taffy and Cracker Jacks. Well, I'm going to step in and tax your asses back down to 120lb.” He subsequently chalks up the biggest defeat in presidential, etc.

6.A photograph emerges of Obama wearing Crocs. Not even the white Crocs that you could pretend you bought “to clean the pool”, but a bright green pair. Which, as the incriminating telephoto images reveal, Obama has subsequently customised with Jibbitz of cocker spaniels, four-leaf clovers and a mooning Garfield.

7.Trying to defuse the “controversial” nature of being a black presidential candidate, he tries to put it “all into perspective”. “It's not like I'm gay, though, is it? Or Mexican,” he says, pulling a “you know what I'm saying, guys” face.

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