If you haven’t noticed anything new in the presidential campaign….

….you haven’t been paying attention. That’s fine. The Olympics have started, they’re a good diversion. A lot of folks are away in August, and there’s just widespread campaign fatigue across the land.

But….things have changed.

For the first time the idea began to take hold that John McCain can win this thing.

I’ve noted these polls that have the candidates in a statistical dead heat lately, and especially when McCain got the bounce from Obama’s overseas tour. But what’s happened lately?

Mr. Obama got tagged the past month as something new, not the candidate from Men’s Vogue but arrogant, aloof and somehow ethereal. There is no there there.

Peggy Noonan circulates in a political orbit with longtime insiders and savvy analysts. So this is interesting, as her columns usually are.

Everyone I know plays the game of “This election is just like 1932,” or ’52, or whatever. “It’s 1960—the youthful charismatic JFK versus the boring and so Republican Nixon.” “No, it’s ’92 and the youthful charismatic Clinton versus the tired old Bush.” This election is, in fact, exactly like the 2008 election. But the other day a friend said something I hadn’t heard before: “This is 1948, and Obama is Tom Dewey”—the sleek, well-groomed, inevitable one who lost. I pondered this and said maybe he’s Dewey, but Mr. McCain’s not Truman, not so far. He is still, on the trail, his scattered self, not “Give ‘Em Hell Harry.” But the point is, even the clichés have begun to shift.

McCain is a hawk and that worries a lot of people. But more Americans seem to be wondering:

In a time of high stakes, do we want Mr. Untried and Untested?

One of the most important points Noonan makes here is that Obama doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and neither does his well-organized, highly skilled and talented staff.

The presidential-type seal with OBAMA on it, the sometimes over-the-top rhetoric about healing the earth and parting the seas. They pick the biggest, showiest venue for the Berlin speech, the Brandenburg Gate, just like a president, not realizing people would think: Ya gotta earn that one, kid.

And meanwhile, McCain is earning more respect, it appears. At least people are giving him a second look, including political journalists.