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The choice between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is truly a choice between two people. It's not about two different world views. The Democrats are not trying to figure out who is the real liberal.

In this choice, just about everything meets the eye of any alert citizen. There are no experts with special knowledge. It's all out there.

One candidate is a white woman who has been on the national scene for the better part of two decades. She is plenty smart and about as technically prepared for the presidency as anybody ever is. A few people insist that having been first lady is not a qualification for the presidency, but these are often the same people who once complained that her involvement went way beyond being first lady.

Anyway, she has now also been a U.S. senator from the nation's second-biggest state through this decade, and she has a constructive record.

Notwithstanding her current losing streak in primaries, her campaign has probably left the American people thinking better of her than they did before. Though many partisans still hate her, she has rubbed the rough edges off her general reputation for iciness and remove.

On the downside, she is a plodding, rather than gifted, politician.

Right point at right time in right way

The other candidate is a young black man who first went to Washington only in 2005, having won himself a place in the nation's political discourse with a 2004 convention speech. That speech made the right point at the right time in the right way, a way that will be remembered: we are not best understood as red states and blue states, but as the United States.

He doesn't have the experience one normally looks for in a president. If you see the presidency as a technical job about the operation of levers, then maybe Sen. Clinton is your best candidate.

If you see it as being about leadership and inspiration and the shaping of a vision for the nation's future, then Sen. Barack Obama is the choice.

In the rhetoric of all the presidential candidates, there's a lot of blarney, a lot of stuff that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. But the heart of Sen. Obama's campaign pitch has been exactly right and well chosen:

The country profoundly needs a restart in its approach to political combat. It needs a new dedication to the possibility of "disagreeing without being disagreeable" (a cliche he has resorted to in his less inspired moments).

Poisonous politics

Sen. Obama gives every indication of being a realist. He knows his election will not be followed by an era of sweetness and light. But he is right in insisting that there's nothing inevitable about the current level of poison in our politics.

And he is politically astute enough to have picked a campaign theme that his opponent can't offer. Through little fault of her own, Sen. Clinton is a still a symbol of division.

Sen. Obama's success in coming from obscurity to front-runner status is relevant. Politics is a big part of a president's job. He or she must be able to size up situations correctly. Barack Obama has demonstrated the touch.

He has already come up with the best line to be used against presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain: "The wheels have come off the Straight Talk Express."

Democrats looking for a Reagan or a Kennedy

Let's face it: the Democrats are looking for their Ronald Reagan, or for this generation's John F. Kennedy. It's been remarkable to see how many experienced Washington hands are supporting the new guy.

They reject the experience argument in favor of the inspiration and talent argument. They know that no amount of experience makes a person a national leader. You've either got it or you ain't.

Let's face another thing, too: Sen Obama's identity as a black man adds to the impact of his pitch.

Yes, Hillary Clinton would be a historic "first," too. Unlike her opponent, though, she has not had to build her candidacy from scratch. Being a former president's wife is an advantage, not a disadvantage.

Anyway, for this particular country, "first black" is a bigger first than "first woman." Gender is not the special American problem; race is. Other democracies have had female leaders; this one will, too, and should — and soon.

But a country that handled race so disastrously for so long is extraordinarily lucky to now have a Barack Obama. For the first black president to be dedicated, above all, to the cause of Americanness, of unity, would be to get the whole undertaking just right.

It is inspired, and it's a start.

A vote for Barack Obama is a leap of faith, given his meager experience in national governance. But the country has had a chance to size him up over a long campaign. His two books, his six-year record in the Illinois legislature, his community activism before that, and his leadership as a Harvard law student all lead to the conclusion that he is a man of substance and dignity, not just a symbol.

He offers the Democrats a shot at one of their periodic restarts, like Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Bill Clinton. The moment should be seized.