'This thing is bigger than you. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than all of us'.

Ever since some short-sighted dolt wrote, "It's all over for Obama. The Democrats would be nuts to nominate him", I've become more and more certain that he's just about got the Presidency locked up. The only doubt comes from the fact that despite everything going his way - economic news still poor, the surge is disappearing as a election issue, McCain & his campaign can't figure out how to lay a glove on Obama - Obama still isn't putting much distance between himself and McCain in the polls. As good as things look for Obama right now I suspect that most Americans aren't paying much attention.

Watching the news clips of that vast throng gathered to hear Obama in Berlin yesterday evening I was wondering if Americans were watching this spectacle and were any of them, like me, just a touch embarrassed by it all. Don't get me wrong, Obama puts on a great show. It's just that I felt like I was watching and listening to Bono, only without The Edge.

Today I read David Brooks's column and I just loved his review of Obama's Berlin gig.

But he has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words drift far from reality, and not only when talking about the Senate Banking Committee. His Berlin Victory Column treacle would have made Niebuhr sick to his stomach.

Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney.

{I love that jump the shark reference. I'm not sure it's true, but I like it anyway.}

This Berlin event has convinced me that there's nothing - NOTHING - John McCain can do to get elected. He has to wait, watch and hope that Obama sinks his own campaign. I thought the Jeremiah Wright connection would do him in and I still think that will find its way back into the campaign when the pace picks up. Mostly, however, McCain's hope rests on Obama's increasing arrogance.

For the most part the American people know John McCain. He doesn't really have to campaign. Besides how can you look at or listen to him and be won over. You can't. Not really. So, McCain can only win if Obama's hubris drives the voters away and that's not an impossibility.