'The One'? Take a Number, Sen. Obama

Being the One means conquering doubt about one's powers.

Neo: I'm not the One.

Oracle: Sorry, kid. You got the gift, but it looks like you're waiting for something.

Neo: What?

Oracle: Your next life maybe. Who knows? That's the way these things go.

Perhaps inevitably, being the One means letting down some of your followers. The Who's Tommy -- the "deaf, dumb and blind kid" who "sure plays a mean pinball" -- is idolized and then abandoned by the followers he tries to enlighten.

Obama plays a mean basketball. He has been tested, overcome doubts. If some of his true believers have placed outsize faith in him, he can't be blamed. After all, he slew the two-headed beast called Billary.

Sometimes he seems to playfully encourage his image as the One. Before the New Hampshire primary, he joked to an audience, "I am going to try to be so persuasive in the next 20 minutes or so that a light is going to shine down from the ceiling. . . . You will experience an epiphany. You will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack.' "

He told House Democrats this week, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," our colleague Dana Milbank reported.

Also this week, the Obama campaign sent out an e-mail in the name of Michelle Obama to invite folks to contribute money for a chance to be among 10 lucky supporters who will get to "go backstage with Barack" at the Democratic convention in Denver, as if he were that special kind of One: the rock star.

But no, he is just a politician. So is John McCain. But one talks more like the One than the other one.

I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington. . . . I'm asking you to believe in yours.