John McCain, it seems, has decided to re-run Hillary Clinton's ultimately failed campaign against Barack Obama. John Heilemann, the New York magazine writer, spotted signs that the rightwing former prisoner of war was modelling himself on the left-of-centre ex-first lady a fortnight ago: both were served by feuding and leaking staffers, both were tempted into populist gambits such as supporting a summer petrol tax holiday and both were betting their record of experience could trump Mr Obama's promise of change.

But the parallels became overwhelming this week when Mr Obama's triumphant tour of the Middle East and Europe goaded the McCain team into blaming it all on the favourite culprit of the waning days of Mrs Clinton's campaign: the media and its alleged love affair with Mr Obama. The Clinton camp's accusations got a boost from a Saturday Night Live sketch satirising the supposedly solicitous treatment Mr Obama received from television debate moderators; Mr McCain's operation went one better, creating its own satirical video of Obamaphile pundits, called Obama-love, and posting it on YouTube.

It is a funny clip and Mr McCain's staff get extra points for using YouTube to disseminate it, particularly given their boss's recent admission that he does not use e-mail. But they should not expect their video's underlying charge to take much of the shine off the glowing coverage the Democrat has received so far from his foreign tour.

For a start, Mrs Clinton's cries of media bias ultimately did not work. And Mr McCain is in a weaker position than the New York senator to complain of unfair treatment at the hands of the nation's scribes. Unlike Mrs Clinton, he cannot add the stinging accusation of sexism to his charge sheet - and ageism is not really an alternative, because while you actually can be too old to be president it should not be the case that you can be too female.

More important, and in contrast with Mrs Clinton, Mr McCain has been a big beneficiary of media-love himself over the years. The Arizona senator's self-deprecating sense of humour, his accessibility and the simple fact that, at least some of the time, he is nice to journalists have made him a favourite within the punditocracy - so much so that an alternative media critique circulating in the left-ish blogosphere in recent days has been that the MSM (mainstream media) has been wrongly ignoring a series of McCain gaffes out of affection for the crusty codger.

That makes it hard for Mr McCain to cry foul - and may be the reason why, when asked about it directly, he has made a point of distancing himself from complaints about a pro-Obama media tilt. Mr McCain needs to be particularly chary of this charge at times when, as was the case this week, Mr Obama gets more positive coverage not because the media is in love with him but because his campaign's stagecraft and his own performance are flatly superior to that of his more experienced rival.

All of this makes Obama-love a weak weapon in the McCain arsenal - but that does not necessarily make it a perfect tool for Mr Obama. Even as the first-term senator pulled off a picture-perfect foreign tour this week, his poll numbers in a few important states actually drifted downwards. An NBC/WSJ survey hints at what might be the problem: 58 per cent of respondents said they identified with Mr McCain's background and values but only 47 per cent felt the same way about Mr Obama.

When you are - and proudly proclaim yourself to be - the son of father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, with a childhood that took you from Hawaii to Indonesia, it is not surprising that you need to work that bit harder to convince voters you are a guy they can relate to. The charisma that is the root cause of Obama-love could certainly help the Democrat to make enough Americans feel comfortable with him to get to the Oval Office. But Obama-love could just as easily hurt the newcomer in this crucial project.

Mr Obama's weakest political moments have been when he has seemed remote from or superior to ordinary Americans: his remarks about rural Pennsylvanians being "bitter", his bad bowling, even his lack of enthusiasm for junk food. If Mr Obama is not careful, the very qualities that make the Illinois politician such a superstar could also make him unattractive. Drew Westen, professor of behavioural science at Emory University and author of The Political Brain , who has informally advised the Obama team, warns: "It could feed into the whole narrative that he is different and dangerous, he's not like us."

Americans have complicated and contradictory requirements of their presidents. They must be supermen (and, one day, maybe superwomen) who can bestride the globe as commanders-in-chief, rescue the imploding economy and spiritually rally the nation. But they must also do a plausible impersonation of an ordinary guy, someone, as we used to say about George W. Bush, you would like to have a beer with, or, as Rudyard Kipling put it, who does not look too good, nor talk too wise. Mr Obama would probably still be in the Illinois state legislature if he did not have the extraordinary ability to inspire Obama-love; he may not get to the Oval Office if he cannot also pull off what may be the tougher task of persuading enough Americans that somehow, simultaneously, he is just one of us.