It doesn't matter who wins! Seriously, guys, America is about to become, once again, the coolest place on Earth.

An era is ending. If you still think the US is home to all that is fatty and unwholesome and militaristic and cloth-eared and generally low-grade, and not much else, it may be time to give the Yanks another chance.

Politically, socially, culturally, America is - as we watch transfixed and, in spite of ourselves, impressed - being born again.

Suddenly we are reminded of why 55 million people have chosen to come to America in the roughly 400 years since that journey became possible. We are reminded of why Americans are so deeply, annoyingly, attached to their nation and their system. We are reminded of how vibrant that system can be.

It works! America's political recrudescence did not begin in 2008. The fag-end of the Reagan era (which, as Barack Obama has correctly suggested, lasted through the Clinton years) probably staggered to a close in the early days of Bush's second term. The denouement involved the President in his pyjamas, the social conservatives on their high horses and the courts in the role the Founding Fathers intended: reining in the mob.

To be precise; at one o'clock in the morning of March 21, 2005, President Bush put pen to paper and (inadvertently) consigned the politics of the Eighties to the trash.

He had been woken by his staff to sign emergency legislation designed to save the life of Terri Schiavo. Mrs Schiavo was the Florida woman who had suffered a catastrophic heart attack and brain damage and was being kept alive with feeding tubes. Her husband wanted them removed, her parents did not.

It went to Florida's courts and the judges were persuaded that Terri would have wanted to die: they found for the husband. Fatefully, the social conservatives - in their pomp so they thought - decided to go for broke. They challenged the courts, and challenged the nation: let us rebuild America in the image of social conservatism.

So Congress passed a Bill bringing the case to the federal courts (in the Senate not a single vote was cast against it) and the pyjama-wearing President signed it. Surely the moment had come for the faithful to taste victory; for America to be transformed into a nation fit for the morally righteous.

It never happened. The federal courts backed the local courts (impeach them, the politicians cried, but nobody tried) and the Supreme Court yawned and raised an eyebrow and refused even to hear the case. Terri Schiavo was allowed to die. And in opinion poll after opinion poll most Americans felt, with sadness but with conviction as well, that the courts had been right.

And something stirred. Americans are deeply religious but they are also deeply attached to the idea that folks can get on with their lives unmolested by government. When the two clashed, freedom won. The Strange Death of Social Conservatism as the driving force in US politics was under way. 2006 confirmed it: a thumping, the President called it, as the midterm election results returned Democrats to power in Congress, delivered the first-ever defeat to a state ballot initiative that would have banned gay marriage (in Arizona) and approved state funding of stem-cell research in, of all places, Missouri.

Nothing the voters decide this November will change this dynamic. Not even the fantastic Mrs Palin - the Iron Lady of Alaska - who is on the Republican ticket to serve a purpose but not, frankly, to serve in office. Mrs Palin's views are certainly of the hard-line Religious Right but the party is not intending that they become policy and the party would be destroyed if they did.

The idea (which Mrs Palin backs) that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest was tried out on the people of South Dakota recently. South Dakota is no friend of abortion but even these conservative voters nixed the plan.

No, America is changing and a new era is beginning: a post-Reagan era in which social conservatism (galvanising Republicans and terrifying Democrats) is replaced as the driving force in US politics by...

Well, we don't know. And it may take some time for us to be sure of what it is, and for the winning ticket to work it out. After all, the great eras in American politics begin and end messily and they are not driven necessarily by a change of party; more by a change of national cultural mood.

One of the emerging features of American life at the moment - perhaps a political driver in years to come - is the desire for modernisation. In the world's economic powerhouse there is a fear of falling behind. In fact there is an awareness that America is falling behind.

It's the infrastructure, stupid! The Reagan era (which predated Reagan and probably began with Nixon in 1968) had all manner of effects on the nation, but among the key long-lasting legacies has been a neuralgic reaction to taxation. Many Americans have allowed themselves to think you might be able to run a modern economy on the proceeds from slot machines. As Jim Callaghan once said, in a different context: “I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists!”

Americans hunger for mobile phone networks that work. For rapid transport that whizzes. For bridges that don't fall down. They do not hunger for government but they do hunger for efficiency, for a governing infrastructure that serves a modern economy; for a health system that delivers medicine without bankrupting companies and individuals. Both John McCain and Barack Obama know this. Each is under pressure to deliver.

America is imperfect. It has no divine right to be the world's leading nation. And yet - in this glorious political year - something about it sings.

And as the American Olympic team reminded us when we looked at it and wondered at its multicolour, multi-ethnic vibrancy (more than 30 members were born abroad) this nation is ours. There is nothing wrong in wishing it well.

Justin Webb is the author of Have a Nice Day - Behind the Clichés: Giving America Another Chance. He is the BBC's North America editor

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