Barack Obama
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and presumptive vice presidential running mate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., wave at a rally in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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Bowling a few frames? Absolutely. Windsurfing? Not so much. Clearing brush on your ranch with rolled-up flannel sleeves? Pitch perfect. Forgetting how much real estate you've accumulated? Hit the road, Jack.

In the language of politics and the vernacular of American culture, one god towers above all others and must be forever kneeled to. It is the "everyday American," and woe is the candidate who runs afoul of this being or does not understand its mercurial soul.

This week, the lionization of the regular guy pervades most every message emerging from the Democrats' quadrennial unityfest. "Everywhere you look at the 2008 Democratic Convention," the party boasts, "you will see everyday Americans featured prominently."

And so everyday Americans, whatever the label might mean, are being put forward vigorously, harvested as ingredients in a master narrative aimed at showing voters that Barack Obama is one of them and nudging them toward that conclusion even though the color of his skin makes it clear that, for many voters he covets, he is not.

We are seeing our neighbors, our co-workers, our compatriots following the script and calling the potential next president of the United States, simply, "Barack." And unsurprisingly, via video screen and through surrogates' words, "Barack" is endeavoring to act just like them.

It's both uplifting and vaguely Stepfordian to hear Amtrak machinist Mike Fisher, who is worried he might lose his job, talk like this: "Barack and Michelle listened and they understood. It was like talking with family. It became clear that they are regular people."

Or to hear Candi Schmieder, a mother of three who works part time, describe Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope," as "just bringing people together so real changes can be made that affect the everyday lives of people like me."

Powerful stuff. Pandering, some might say. We, the People: In America, it's all about us. But what does that really mean?

We want someone who understands our economic challenges, channels our fears, feels our pain. This produces a push to cast the candidate in the role of all things to all people, the chameleon equally at home in a small-town feed store, exurban Starbucks and inner-city community center.

Then comes the election, and suddenly the everyday American recedes, still informing the presidency but secondary to the leader who must use power wisely. That became starker when Harry S. Truman ushered in the Atomic Age, raising the stakes on the notion of an average guy running the country.

"Joe from next door cannot end life on the Earth," says Evan Cornog, author of "The Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington to George W. Bush."

Or consider how Jon Stewart famously put it in 2000 when everyone was discussing which candidate would be best to hang out with. He didn't want to have a beer with these guys, he said: "I want my president to be the designated driver."

Averageness has always competed with excellence to be American democracy's defining trait, and reverence for the prosaic is as old as the first settlement.

The Puritans, who were Protestants, broke with the Church of England to make their way in the New World and brought with them a disdain for formal institutional authority that was folded into the bedrock of American culture.

"You start out with almost an anti-intellectual strain there: `I want someone who's like me so they can understand me and know what I need government to be doing,'" says Natalie Davis, a political scientist at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996.

Thomas Jefferson, the wellspring of American grass-roots democracy, believed in the power of the common man, but only to a point. And he wasn't exactly a member of the toiling proletariat. Only with Andrew Jackson's populist campaign and 1828 ascent to the White House was the true notion of an "everyday guy" unleashed (though even Jackson, despite humble roots, was a decorated general when elected).

After that, the "humble origins" narrative never went away. William Henry Harrison was the Whigs' answer to Jackson, with his artificially styled regular-guyness and his penchant for hard cider. And Abraham Lincoln packaged himself as a just-folks leader even though he was a prominent attorney and intellectual by the time he made his way from log cabin to White House.

Since the Depression, the idea of the "forgotten man" has entrenched itself, and stoking the fires of populism has become a campaign tool. These days, the ability to traffic in the concerns of the average American is the most coveted currency of all.

Gaffes prove this rule. When George H.W. Bush looked at his watch during a 1992 debate, it fueled a perception that he was haughty. But when Obama bowled clumsily, it mattered less; he took some jabs, but the affair evaporated quickly. It was, after all, bowling.

"To have a bad bowling score is good. People see you as human," says Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who bowled with Obama in March. Both were seen as very human.

"Nobody wants to be the elite guy," says Eric Rauchway, author of "Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelt's America."

"There is a suspicion of expertise," he says. "No matter how educated you are, how successful you are, you still need to be just folks."

That only goes so far. Jimmy Carter was decried as unpresidential for carrying his own bags and for wearing wool cardigans, and Bill Clinton took no end of grief early in his presidency for his would-you-like-fries-with-that proclivities. Turns out we may not want someone THAT much like us.

The vagueness of the term "everyday American" confuses things further, because everyone defines it differently. Ask a half-dozen people and you'll probably get that many answers. To many, it's about economics: Chicago Mayor Richard Daley proposes that one definition of a regular American is someone who earns $100,000 or less each year.

For the Democrats, the ultimate subliminal message is about race. Just as the term "outsider" was used by racists during the civil-rights era to mean blacks and Jews, casting Obama as an "everyday American" can be code for, "Yes, he's black, but he's just like you anyway."

Thus the multitentacled balancing act that today's candidates must effect. Boiled down, each needs to be enough like us to understand the texture of our lives, but enough unlike us to solve our most pressing problems. That's a tall order.

"You want someone who you can say, `He's like me, but I know in a crisis situation he can handle it,'" says Kelsey Rushing, 36, a delegate from Canton, Miss. Many say that is exactly why Obama selected Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., as his running mate.

Asked to identify the "average American," Rushing looks at his wife and offers a very brief answer: "Us."

And that's it exactly.

Tracking the average American is the snipe hunt of American politics. It's an unseen, legendary target that keeps shifting, causing candidates to craft images of themselves as bowlers and brush-clearers and whatever else will make them seem like Joe from next door albeit a Joe who can indeed handle the nuclear football.

Republican or Democrat, it is politicians' ultimate conundrum. To win, they must, in the end, be all things to all people. And in this patchwork quilt of a republic, regular is forever in the eye of the beholder.

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