How do you solve a problem like Obama?

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

So, if you missed it, history was made yesterday. The aptly named speech, "A More Perfect Union", was precisely the right speech at precisely the right moment, given to a national audience. Clintonistas must be infuriated right now and McCainiacs are furiously researching new and better ways to pin down the rhetorical shadowboxer. He was on the ropes for a moment, but he slipped away once more.

The problem is that Barrack Obama isn't a man. He isn't a candidate. He isn't even human. He's an idea. He's a vision. He's the dream of progress made flesh. And you can't fight that.

People don't like Barrack Obama because of his policies. They don't vote for him because they think he'll fix the economy or get us out of Iraq. They vote for him because he makes them feel better about their world, about their country, and about themselves. They vote for him because an African-American president, by simple fact of existence, purges America of its original sin. It cleanses away the guilt, the shame, the divisions, and the hatreds of slavery. Or at least, it promises to.

What Clinton is desperately trying to do, and what McCain will have to succeed at, is to make Barrack Obama a man. A candidate. Because if people begin to see him as a real person, rather than the image of redemption and the promise of an end to racial division, then some serious questions can be asked about who the man is. Then you can play politics and start swinging away. In fact, if voters see Obama as a real human being at any point in this election, he's probably finished.

But how do you do it? How do you pull him down off his pedestal when he can evade punches like the Reverend Wright story? That should have brought down anyone. And it may yet bring down Obama, but it won't be that story alone that does it. Obama's inspiring presentation of his clear analysis and insight into race relations in America saw to that.

As a man and a candidate, he's got all kinds of problems. But as a vision, this guy keeps getting better and better.

And if you're just here for the punch and pie, here's a girl doing 21 accents.