There is something captivating about New York City and it's not Trump Tower.

Your senses are heightened by the power of the place.

Wall Street in the financial district.

The strength and diversity of the architecture and the "city that never sleeps" ensures you are humbled by the place, yet excited by the opportunities.

The enormity of Ground Zero and the National September 11 Memorial, acknowledging the terrorist attacks that provoked the war on terror, makes you stop and think and not say a word.

The names - so many names. The devastation and destruction. The sheer scale and carnage of the act and its impact.

The irony is a strange comfort you feel from the crowds. About 8.5 million call New York City home.

There is safety in numbers as you shop or watch a show or go to dinner in a restaurant with a paper-thin gap between the tables.

And even though you can hear far more than you need to know with no choice but to listen to conversations, you embrace the culture knowing that New York City is one of the most densely populated locations in the world.

There is a crush of people including locals, and tourists, and those who come to the city for work and the poor and homeless who come to the city to survive.

The New York Yankees baseball franchise and the Statue of Liberty National Monument and boroughs like the Bronx; the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge; the Chrysler Building and Rockefeller Plaza; Broadway and Carnegie Hall - New York City is an incredible mix of business and finance and sport and the arts. It feels like the centre of the world.

But it is also the simple things.

Sitting in a typical downtown café and drinking thick black dripolator coffee that does not taste great but feels right.

Reading the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal like a stock market aficionado pretending to predict the state of play.

On the west coast of the US, California - like New York State, it is a Democratic stronghold in Presidential elections.

However, when visiting, there was no mention of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Not at the theme parks or Denny's Diner or on the Greyhound or in the Uber - no one spoke of the man.

Obviously, they were getting on with their lives or were tourists and President Trump did not rate a mention.

It was bewildering because you wanted to hear what the people had to say.

From the outside, President Donald Trump is as divisive a democratically elected leader the world has ever seen. He says whatever he likes with or without basis and repeats 'facts' and 'lies' until he believes his own mistruths.

That is not to underestimate the man, rather, to comment on his tactics.

President Trump is a billionaire; a fortune made from inheritance and growth in property wealth and his dominance as a reality television performer.

His no-nonsense style of communication coupled with his regard as a political outsider made him a formidable yet unpredictable and awkward command and control leader of the White House.

President Trump appears not to care for his mistakes in pronunciation or fact with the term fake-news becoming nearly as common in Australian lexicon as G'day.

Much like the third Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, President Trump has cultivated and captivated a far younger generation of political activists and commentators.

For all his faults and perhaps due to the collateral damage he has created, children can tell you about Mr Trump and his presidency and recall common facts about the world's most influential superpower.

To hear Australian children discussing a US presidential election, including watching debates and keeping an eye on the vote count in such depth is unprecedented.

The 44th and first African-American President Barack Obama is famous across the world, and he is still draining three-pointers deep from his shooting pocket on a basketball court.

But I cannot remember the junior Senator Obama verses the late senior Senator John McCain III.

Or President Obama verses Governor Mitt Romney presidential elections generating such worldwide interest.

The United States is a country divided with a nasty unease deeply concerning many Americans and those countries who rely upon the alliance for trade and world stability.

Now, New York City does not sleep because of the fear of what is to come to finalise the election result.

The tension, underpinned by lies and caused by a failure to accept democracy including unconscionable comments that have been called out by major television networks, and the potential for civil unrest fortified by a reprehensible set of gun laws underpinned by a missing comma in the Second Amendment, has created a cocktail of conflict and concern for the future.

For the centre of the world: "If I can make it there, I'm gonna make it anywhere, It's up to you, New York, New York".