In Barack Obama’s defense, he’s doing what nearly any political candidate would do when the country seems to be crying out in one voice for you. He’s playing along. Surely the senator, an intelligent and reasonable man, does not believe everything that the media has been saying about him. He isn’t “the hope of the entire world,” he isn’t “the triumph of Word over flesh,” he isn’t “our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings.” He isn’t “a gift this country needs.” I think he knows, somehow, that his candidacy is a little more prosaic than that. In a Democratic primary race that resembles, alternately, a coronation, a revelation, and a down-home revival meeting, Barack Obama must understand that his campaign probably isn’t going to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead.

   But then there’s his wife, Michelle Obama, out on the stump, saying things like “for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback." And it makes you wonder: How much are the Obamas buying into the hype?

   Obama is prone to the same type of rhetorical excess. "My job this morning is to be so persuasive...that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack," he said in a campaign event prior to the New Hampshire primary.

   Fair enough. But for American voters, votes aren’t usually cast because of an epiphany. There’s no beam of light that illuminates the perfect candidate. In America, votes are almost always cast for the candidate that’s most ready to be the president of the United States. Obama’s inexperience, as irrelevant as it’s been in the primary fight, is still an issue.

   The central question of this election, made starkly apparent by Obama’s likely general election opponent, John McCain, is this: How serious are we?

   The American people have a self-evident silly streak. Just look at our obsessions. Not war and peace in the Middle East, but celebrity life and untimely death. It’s not that we can’t rise to the challenge, just look at our response to WWII, or 9/11, but we have a hard time rising up until the challenge is painfully obvious.

   So at a basic level, the choice of this election rests on our underlying assumptions about the world we live in. Is it a world where a President Obama could, by sheer force of will and personal magnetism, remake the globe and pave over centuries of hatred and mistrust? Many think so. Obama thinks so.

   Or is the world more dangerous than that? Do we need to elect an old war hero, a man whose scars and flaws are all over his face and body, to win the wars of the future? John McCain is many things, but a vote for him will never be cast because of an epiphany or a dazzling light through the window. He’s not a man who will transcend politics, or transfigure the American people. But maybe he can take care of the office of the presidency, with humility and an attitude of service. Maybe his resolve, forged in more dangerous places than Washington, will be enough to weather the certain storms of the next four years.

   There’s one more question this election will ask: Is America in need of saving, or can it save?

   The Obamas clearly think this country needs a savior. Mrs. Obama said, “Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation and that you move out of your comfort zone. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage.” In other words, he’ll save you.

   John McCain thinks about himself a little differently. “I do not seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need,” he said. “I seek the presidency with the humility of a man who cannot forget that my country saved me.” To McCain, America is bigger than he is.

   There’s no way of telling what shape the next nine months will take. The world is a volatile place, as we’ve seen in Pakistan, in Cuba, and in Kenya. But some questions will lie just beneath the stream of discourse, as we, in a very real way, define ourselves by who we choose to lead us.