I don't think this painful reality has quite registered with party leaders, though it obviously did with primary voters, especially in the later contests. Obama didn't just project aloofness and superiority; he confessed it when he denounced small-town Americans as bitter clingers. And conceit? "We are the ones we've been waiting for." (Read: "I am the one you've been waiting for.")

But the self-absorbed liberal intelligentsia and the mainstream media are the last to catch on. More and more, they are acknowledging Obama's strange detachment and his curious ability to rise above his emotions. But they're straining to present those as positive attributes -- "he shows remarkable self-control" -- when they could very well be his political Achilles' heel.

Among Obama's formidable challenges, such as explaining away his indefensible relationships with terrorists and America-hating pastors, his super-cool remoteness may just be his toughest. He might just be too cool by half.

How can a guy whose fellow Harvard Law Review editors lampooned as just a "first among equals," whose fellow Illinois legislators unflatteringly dubbed "the governor," or whose own handlers intend to present at the convention as a Greek god descending from the Parthenon connect with that common man he so desperately needs in November?

How can a man who considers emoting a sign of weakness and who became upset at his friend for showing his emotions and being too thin-skinned "feel your pain" in the grand tradition of Democratic Master Empathizer Bill Clinton?

The answer is he probably can't, but he better learn how to fake it pretty soon, or his bright shining political star just might flame out and fall as quickly as it ascended.