While everyone seems to be praising Barack Obama’s selection of Joe Biden for running mate as a much-needed corrective to Obama’s foreign policy inexperience and elitist aura, one of Israel’s top political commentators sees the choice as a disaster for the Obama phenomenon. Writing in YNet, Nachum Barnea has only praise for Biden’s record on Israel — “In recent years I met him twice… When it comes to Israel, his record is perfect.” Yet in choosing Biden, Obama has, in an instant, lost all his revolutionary lustre.

What happened to Barack Obama is the same thing that happened to Hillary Clinton before that: He rose up on the wings of change, excited some voters as if he was a rock star and pushed away others – and then he froze in midair.

His decision to choose Joe Biden as his candidate for vice president illustrates the complete change that he went through since his primaries victory: He lost the revolutionary momentum that distinguished his campaign; he lost his freshness. He has become cautious, predictable, and conventional. It is no wonder that the young people who espouse his candidacy are now telling pollsters they will not bother to make it to the polling stations.

There is something to Barnea’s analysis, and it holds true not only for Obama, but for politicians more generally who run for office: The only thing worse than having a gaping flaw in your credentials is trying too hard to compensate for it — for at that moment, you admit that your flaws are far more important than you had previously led your devotees to believe. By picking Biden, Obama blinked when it comes to the revolution.

McCain, for his part, is supremely lucky to have Obama as his opponent, for it allows him to play the straight man, building his campaign on quiet strength and sound judgment, never having to play the revolutionary. In his current role, his famous temper is far less of an issue than it would have been if he were running against someone like Al Gore, who destroyed Ross Perot’s political hopes in a single debate years ago when he got Perot to lose his temper in public. But Obama’s appeal is in his ability to inspire a sense of hope, not calm. If the race stays neck-and-neck in the polls, and there are no further major strategic changes on either side, there is a good chance the race will utimately go to McCain, for the simple reason that once in the voting booth, a great many voters will, at the last minute, prefer a narrative of safety to one of hope.