Is it just me or does everything seem to be broken?

Our credit markets are scared of their own shadows. Our political system looks oxymoronic. Our balance sheet is drowning in red ink. We are dismissed, laughed at or reviled in much of the world. The Russian Navy is sailing into our hemisphere. No one trusts anyone else, especially in the media, to tell the truth.

It’s the perfect moment for me to start a presidential campaign blog!

I didn’t think that I needed to write about this contest every day, let alone every available minute of every day. But I do, starting … now.

I already do everything but skywriting: columns in the magazine and on the Web, reporting on MSNBC, publishing a book on American politics. But I can’t resist wanting to write more, because this campaign—this moment—is too damned compelling.

America’s fate and future always are at stake, but rarely so vividly and urgently. Trends always surface, but rarely with such force.There is a sense of momentousness about this election. It already has made history: the oldest candidate (John McCain) against the first African-American (Barack Obama), who defeated the first serious female candidate (Hillary Clinton) at a time when the dollar is losing its value and America is losing its grip.

Baby Boomers—having done their utmost to wreck their own patrimony—are about to give way to new generations of Americans.

Lord knows we could use some leadership. “Here, sir, the people rule,” Alexander Hamilton said--which is true except that, as Hamilton knew, the people can’t do so without brave, shrewd leaders.

Never in our recent history have they been more needed, which is why so many voters and viewers are tuning in to this campaign. They knew, or intuit, that these are crucial times. We must get it right.

So welcome to 40 Days!  Forty days from today, on Nov. 4, the polls will open across the country. Between now and then I will try to make sure that whatever I learn and hear I pass on in this space.

Forty days is an appropriately biblical time span: that’s how long God flooded the world, allowing Noah to hit the reset button for us all.

I was in Michigan yesterday, hawking my book about American political history and speaking to a crowd of prominent Detroiters. Two points emerged. One: business conditions suck. Two: even so, it is by no means clear, even to Democrats there, that Obama is a lock in that swing state. The first point was no surprise; the second was.

One of the book-party guests was Edsel Ford, a low-key 59-year-old who grew up in—and, by virtue of his last name symbolized—the heyday of Motown. I made the mistake of asking him how business was. He looked at me like I was, well, not much of a reporter.

In Michigan, business is weak, the industrial climate terrible, credit tight. Others had the same sense. A shopping-center developer with a perfect balance sheet reported that that his bank, which also was flush with cash, had stopped financing new projects. News like that means that a recession is in the offing—or begun.

And yet the prominent Detroiters I talked, including, if not especially, the Democrats, wondered aloud whether Obama would win the state. They had two reasons. One: his campaign was continuing to be standoffish, behaving (in a state where Hillary was strong in the primary season) like they knew how to win and the Clinton people didn’t. “They still haven’t bothered to figure out how to use the organization we have here,” groused one prominent Democrat. "It’s as though we don’t exist.”

The other reason was, in a word, race. The sordid tale of Detroit’s recently resigned mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, would complicate Obama’s task. And Michigan has a history: George Wallace first emerged as a national—as opposed to Southern—force by winning the Michigan Democratic primary in 1964. “A lot of those voters, and their children, are still around,” one partygoer told me.

I returned to D.C. in time to watch Congress tie itself in knots over the largest business bailout in American history. McCain dropped by, ostensibly to help close the deal. Instead, he watched as conservative backbenchers in his own party tried to scuttle it—and he dared not tell them to stop. Obama had no choice but to come back to D.C. also, but he was able to stand back from the wreckage, at least for a day.

Today I am on my way to Oxford, Miss., for what is supposed to be the first presidential debate of the season. McCain has said that he won’t show up unless “enough” of the bailout deal has been finished.

So much for Day 40. Not a great start. Maybe the waters are rising.