The only important question in the American election is this: who will make the better president, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. The question is not so much one of character, but who has the better policies which he or she is likely to apply. In answering that question, we know how Mrs Clinton behaved and indeed misbehaved in office. Mr Trump has never held public office.

The answer to this question is not only crucial to America. It is also crucial to Australia and all other Western countries and it is important to the world. America remains by far the dominant world power and, notwithstanding the usual prophets of decline and doom, she is likely to remain so for many years to come.

The answer to the question is clear, and I examine this in detail below. On a range of fundamental policies for the stability, security and economic recovery of the United States – Donald Trump would by far make the better president. And by the commitments he has made and which he confirmed in the second debate, he is still in contention.

This is notwithstanding the massive anti-Trump campaign by America’s mainstream media.

They argue that because of his appalling ”locker room” bravado, he should withdraw and that, anyway, his campaign has imploded. The media campaign, rather than any sudden character assessment, has made the usual Nervous Nellies and bedwetters in the Republican Party abandon their presidential nominee. Of course, there can be criticisms of the nomination process, particularly of the open primaries in some states which allow Democrats and others to participate in the selection and which biased it against Ted Cruz. But it is the process approved by the Republican Party and few could honestly say they had no knowledge of the character of the man chosen.

For years now the American mainstream media has abandoned any pretence to ethical political reporting and is now fully engaged in left-wing campaign journalism. It is reasonable therefore to conclude that their strategy was to go soft on Donald Trump until he triumphed over the best contender for the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz. It is not as if they did not know all along, in excruciating detail, Donald Trump’s many sins. Once he had the nomination, they began to attack him, stepping this up when, to their surprise, he remained a serious contender.

Nor was it a coincidence that the ”locker room” tape was dumped on the Friday before the second debate and just when Wikileaks published some of Mrs Clinton’s secret speeches. These were funded while she was in office for extraordinarily large and questionable donations to the Clinton Foundation. In these she confessed her intention to mislead the public, her belief in open borders and her support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which she now denounces.

It was not surprising that the media concentration was on the ”locker room” tape and not on the far more relevant substantial and shocking revelations in these Wikileaks publication. Indeed these were mainly ignored.

The argument that Donald Trump could not be trusted with his hand on the nuclear button is ironical. It comes from the administration which Mrs Clinton was a part of and now supports which removed the sanctions which were stopping the Iranian mullahs from obtaining nuclear weapons and ICBM’s to fulfil their clearly intended and a very publicly stated twin objectives: “Death to Israel!” And ”death to America”.

After her failure to act to prevent the loss of American lives at Benghazi, and her lies to justify this, the conclusion must be that Mrs Clinton would hardly make a reassuring commander-in-chief. This has been confirmed by her mishandling of state secrets, leaving them open to hacking by hostile powers and thus endangering both national security and more American lives and the lives of American agents and allies.

In addition, it is clear she would as president fill every vacancy on the Supreme Court with left-wing activist judges. She will do what she revealed in one of her secret speeches, she will keep the borders more open than even Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. The result will be more terrorists will come into the United States. She will not follow Trump’s plan to significantly reduce taxation and regulation on business, which would revive the economy, just as Ronald Reagan demonstrated.

Trump is no model candidate but he is certainly better than Mrs Clinton.

As Senator Ted Cruz pointed out when he recently indicated that he would vote for Trump, there are six policy differences between the candidates which led him to that conclusion. Trump managed to refer to some of these, and on every one, Mrs Clinton obfuscated. The most important was the Supreme Court where he said Americans are only one vacancy away from losing their most basic rights. Trump has already provided a list of potential nominees, all solid constitutionalists.

The second is Obamacare, which is hurting millions of Americans. The third is the Obama campaign against the coal and gas industry with the usual obsession of left and weak politicians ensuring that taxpayers subsidise extraordinarily expensive renewable energy. This of course would lead to the further de-industrialisation of America, just as it has in Australia.

The fourth is illegal immigration where Mrs Clinton would clearly continue and even expand Obama’s lawless executive amnesty. Fifth, national security. Mrs Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s ”wilful blindness to radical Islamic terrorism”. She would continue to bring in asylum seekers notwithstanding the fact that the FBI says it cannot check that they are not terrorists.

Sixth, Internet freedom. Cruz says Mrs Clinton supports the Obama’s plan to hand over control of the Internet to an ”international community of stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran”.

As Cruz warned, if Mrs Clinton wins, ”we know — with 100% certainty — that she would deliver on her left-wing promises, with devastating results for our country.”

We should add, ”and for the world.”