If you want to see where the mood of this presidential election is right now, want to get the feel of it, you want to take a look at two recent and wildly popular Youtube videos. One is moving, earnest, and full of the kind of feeling that animates new movements. The other is witty and sly and telegraphs what Democrats see as John McCain’s great weakness, which happens to be what John McCain’s supporters view as his great strength.

Some points on Obama’s strength: It seems to me non-transferable. This isn’t a wave of young people entering politics for the first time and choosing him as their vessel. It’s a wave of young people whose imaginations have been captured by him, and who have become politically active because of him. They are for Obama. It’s not about specific issues but a specific man. This suggests, to me, that they’re either going to raise him high and stick with him, or fail to raise him high and, in their disappointment, begin to drift away from politics. But for now he’s got the wave, and it’s a real one.

As for Senator McCain, he hasn’t even begun to run. He’s trying to quiet his party, establish his leadership of it, and get a break after a year of 18 hour days on the campaign trail. When he comes on he’ll come on strong. But the way it looks to me right now is that part of the dynamic of this election will be something of generational split between — speaking in broad and rough terms — the young, who want to break through, break the wall of the past, break past the Washington establishment and start something new and alive, and those who may be older, more grounded in the difficulties and limits of life, and who would feel a sympathy for, a kinship with, a man who has lived through hard history, who has suffered and endured, who has seen a great deal of life, and who in his own way represents the old America, and an old world.

That’s how it looks to me today.

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