But hey, listen, pal, Wilkie and Stevenson lost, didn’t they? And what people want, or at least what the party wants, is a winner. Which is why the show must go on.

It’s what They decree, and everybody knows who they are — the campaign consultants, the marketeers, the pollsters and focus-group organizers, the political cosmetologists. You can hear them filling up dead-air time on cable TV 24/7, making the old test pattern of television’s youth a thing of beauty and serenity by comparison.

Why, Michelle Obama is just like us now. She told us so. Barack Obama, too, is just average. Our leaders are no better, no worse, than the rest of us. Whew, that’s a relief. The old Republic with its old demands? It’s gone without a trace, replaced by this shiny new mega-democracy in which any distinctions between us and our betters have disappeared. Indeed, there are no more betters. We can all relax now.

We’re not only created equal, now we’re created the same. Local color? A sense of place? Distinctive architecture, accents, history, cuisine? How incorrect politically. Multicultural is the word now, meaning no distinct culture. We all blur. No one must stand out. Michelle is one of us!

This is what the image-makers call a re-introduction, and it worked. Listen to what one Arkansas delegate had to say on Mrs. Obama’s performance Monday night. Thurman Metcalf of Rogers, Ark., a cosmetologist himself, looked on The New Michelle and approved:

“She proved she’s real. She’s one of us.”

And isn’t that the highest compliment?