To understand Barack Obama's campaign, it's instructive to look back at the last contender to enrapture the left's grassroots, Howard Dean. In a December 2003 report, the New York Times Magazine explored the personal dimension of the Dean-mania sweeping the Democratic party.

The story began with the sad tale of Clay Johnson:

Last February, Clay Johnson, 26, took a trip from Atlanta to the Dominican Republic to visit his girlfriend, Merrill, who was studying linguistics at a university there. He carried an engagement ring in his pocket, but when he arrived, he said, Merrill was cold and distant, and he never gave it to her. Before he left, Merrill told him that she didn't love him anymore. He returned to his apartment in Atlanta, [which] was also serving as a storage space for Merrill's possessions .  .  . and as a temporary home for her two cats. He was allergic to the cats. He stripped to his underwear, lay on the floor in a fetal position and remained there for days, occasionally sipping from an old carton of orange juice. .  .  . Johnson's friends kept calling, trying to think of something that would get him out of the house. Finally they hit on one: Howard Dean.

To make a long story short, Johnson eventually arose from the fetal position, put some clothes on, and got a job working for the Dean campaign. Not only that, he found a new girl who struck his fancy and who shared his passion for the Vermont governor. The Times does not report whether she too eventually left Johnson curled up in a ball.

The point of repeating this anecdote isn't to indulge in some belated mockery of the Dean campaign, although such mockery always makes for fine sport. The point is that for a while now, at least since the Iraq war turned into a long slog, there have been legions of liberals anxious to pin their hopes on a new savior, who would get the world spinning on its proper axis again. In 2003, Howard Dean, for reasons we still can't fully comprehend, served as the emotional life preserver for the hopeless left. He was the Magical Democrat who just by dint of his presence in the Oval Office would right the world's wrongs.

In 2008, the far more plausible (not to mention electable) Barack Obama has assumed the role of the Magical Democrat.

After his Super Tuesday victories, Obama delivered one of his more stirring speeches. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who delivers such set-pieces flanked by musty relics from her husband's administration like Wesley Clark and Madeleine Albright, Obama speaks amidst a throng of enthusiastic young followers. The Fox News cameras that night made a point of focusing on one woman who was so overwhelmed by the candidate that her eyes repeatedly welled up. Meanwhile, radio host James Vicevich has compiled a growing list of swooning victims at Obama rallies. (A report from Madison, Wisconsin: "Before the senator arrived, students were tossing around an inflatable cow above the crowd. Three people fainted in the midst of all the enthusiasm.")

It makes one feel like a killjoy to point out that Barack Obama is merely a man, and a politician at that. At the risk of being even more of a sourpuss, one can note that, in spite of the meaning he's already giving to so many people's lives, Obama is a thoroughly conventional liberal. At least when Bill Clinton ran, he did so promising a number of things that weren't in the traditional Democrat's bailiwick. Aside from a very occasional, very tepid suggestion that teachers' unions may be fallible, Obama resides firmly within the Democratic mainstream on every major issue.

Nevertheless, there's something about him that encourages his supporters to consider the impossible achievable. People don't weep in his presence because they have heard the details of his health care prescriptions and concur with his proposals. Obama's success has relied on his campaign occupying a higher plane, a place of hopes realized and dreams come true.

The only problem with being the Magical Democrat is that most elections end up focusing on issues; Obama then may look smaller than he does now. It is harder to strike a pose as a world-historical figure when quibbling over the top marginal income tax rate.

The challenge for Republicans, specifically John McCain, will be to conduct the general election in the real world of limited government and dangerous foreign malefactors rather than in the Obama fantasy world. The good news for McCain is that he has far more experience dealing with the ugliness of the real world than Obama has, and can speak to our looming challenges with far more authenticity.