Benedict’s second goal is reciprocity with Islam. He wants to use his papacy to restore to Christian minorities in Muslim countries the same freedom of religion that most Muslims enjoy in the West. The question of reciprocity is hardly new, but it was never a priority at the Vatican before Benedict’s reign. John Paul II avoided it, on his travels, by saying, in effect, “I go for the country, not the religion.” Benedict has pretty much made it a precondition for relations between the Vatican and the Muslim world. He clearly thinks that the JudeoChristian West has been self-destructively shortsighted in its concessions to the Islamic diaspora, when few, if any, concessions are made to Christians and Jews in most of the Middle East.

Not long before the first votes were cast for the 1984 presidential nominations, Newsweek asked on its cover, ''Can a Movie Help Make a President?'' over a picture of Ed Harris, star of ''The Right Stuff.'' Harris played John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth in 1962, who had become the Ohio senator running for president in the Democratic primaries.

So it is that we who remember the ''Glenn administration'' have a special responsibility to talk about the political impact of popular culture.

With talk radio, the 24-hour cable news networks, the Internet and blogging, technology and popular culture have all been offered up as vehicles for revolutionizing presidential politics. The Internet was a useful fund-raising and organizing tool for Howard Dean. Useful but insufficient; even a good tool cannot rescue a poor candidate.

March 4 is the new Feb. 5, and, depending on whom you listen to, the race is already over on the Democratic side, with Obama needing just one more win to end the Clinton Age in American politics.

One way or the other, the long, hard fight for the Democratic nomination will produce a winner well positioned to beat John McCain and become an iconic figure in American history. Before that happens, however, Democrats must confront the tough question about what becomes of the loser, the runner-up, so to speak—now presumed to be Hillary Clinton, already an iconic American figure in her own right.

Noblesse oblige literally translates to “nobility obligates.” It implies that with wealth, power and prestige come social responsibilities; it is a moral obligation to act with honor, kindliness and generosity.

For citizens of America, true noblesse oblige has nothing to do with high birth, power or prestige. True noblesse oblige is a responsibility for all of us who have been given the benefits of living in a free land, founded on the highest principles. If we, as a country, miss the mark, it is no reflection on the founding principles. It means we have the responsibility to use our energies and intelligence to return to basics and fix it.

We do not need to be wealthy, or powerful, or president to be a hero. We merely need to act, with honor, and with a loving and ethical heart.

Perhaps, some strategists suggest, this gender gap is more about women’s loyalty to Mrs. Clinton than about men’s reluctance to vote for a woman. By this argument, men are responding in droves to the broad appeal of Mr. Obama — the promise of change over experience — while women are hanging back in gender solidarity.

But Kathleen Dolan, a professor of political science and an expert on women in politics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, argues that the visceral reaction of many men to Mrs. Clinton suggests that something more is at work. “You could say men are just really captivated by Obama,” Ms. Dolan said. “But I’m not willing to say that’s what it is.”