FIRST IT WAS Chris Matthews getting a thrill up his leg when he thought of Barack Obama; then it was Newsweek giving Obama a free pass on everything; now it is Mark Halperin over at Time warning that the Charisma Machine is going to roll right over McCain in November, with the media's hand on the wheel. How old McCain looks! How decrepit he is! How sick everyone (especially the press) is of everyone but Obama! How stunning he is! How inspiring he is! How "valuable" he makes people feel, telling them THEY are the ones they are waiting for. How "powerful" it will be when he debates John McCain on security issues, and comes out the better. How "forcefully" Obama will "move to the center as a mainstream, optimistic candidate," celebrating both America's greatness, and "change." (And how great will it be when he ducks into the phone booth, and out comes ... never mind.)

Anything can happen, in the Belmont Stakes and in politics, and perhaps Halperin is right in saying McCain underestimates Obama's pizzazz, and the desire of the press to promote it. But it is also possible he overestimates both Obama, and the power of journalists, himself among them. Love is blind, or at least short-sighted, and there are some warning signs he has missed:

l. The enthusiasm Obama arouses is surely amazing, but it is also contained and confined. In fact, it doesn't even move most of the Democrats. When crunching the numbers in all of the primaries, Michael Barone has found that Obama carried white voters in only two places--state capitals and university towns, where he amassed huge followings among students, teachers, and employees of the government, most of whom (a) tend to lean left; (b) live in a world of words and abstractions; and (c) due to tenure, unions, and parental support, find themselves outside of the world of the marketplace. As such, they are pushovers for ego-massaging and vacuous maunderings. They tend not to notice that his frame of reference is always himself and his feelings, and that his appeals to racial healing, bipartisanship, government reform and sweet reason do not connect to his acts in real life. In the real world, he has voted party line on almost all issues, has managed to befriend and hang out with an amazing collection of people whose lives contradict all these themes, including racists, demagogues, some of the most corrupt practitioners of machine urban politics, and people whose idea of political action once involved planting bombs. These sorts of things may not bother students or shoppers at Whole Foods, but they do bother people who cling to God and their guns out of sheer desperation, and tend to vote in places like, say, Pennsylvania, where Obama lost to Hillary Clinton by ten points.

2. McCain does look old, and this is a problem. On the other hand, he looks like a rock, or an oak tree, while Obama looks more like a reed or a sapling, if not like a twig. He looks attractive, but not too substantial, not someone to look to in trouble. McCain looks as if he could stand up through a hurricane, while Obama might waft away on the wind. He would be better than McCain as an underwear model, but do we really need this in a president? In this case, "young vs. old" could also be read as "weak vs. strong," in which case it flips to McCain's advantage, as we are selecting a commander-in-chief, and not the star of a serial. Unless it could be '24.'