Obama will step out in front of an adoring 75,000

crowd at the Denver Broncos football stadium

to be acclaimed as OH-BAH-MAH. It's a huge mistake

to turn his nomination party into a replica of

a Bruce Springsteen homecoming concert in New Jersey

Obama Idolatry [Source]

Two weeks from now, Barack Obama will step out in front of an adoring 75,000 crowd at the Denver Broncos football stadium to be acclaimed as the Next President of The United States.

He will hope to evoke memories of John F Kennedy's 'New Frontier' speech in the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960.

Like JFK, a mere convention hall is considered too small an arena for the Messiah.

And with brazen opportunism, Obama's acceptance address falls exactly 45years to the day after Martin Luther King delivered his 'I Have A Dream' sermon on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after the historic March On Washington.

You'll be able to hear the Fair Trade champagne corks popping from Illinois to Islington.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, we are free of George W Bush at last!

At the risk of raining on Obama's parade, the comparison which came to mind when I first heard of the plans for this rock star extravaganza in Colorado was not quite so distinguished a figure as JFK or Dr King..

It was Neil Kinnock. Towards the end of the 1992 General Election campaign, Kinnochio bowled into a rally in Sheffield, bounded onstage, punched the air and - against a backdrop of flags, flashing lights, pounding pop music and the obligatory Old Labour brass band - yelled 'We're Awwwwllllll-right!'

When he got to his feet, he was odds-on to become our next Prime Minister. By the time he sat down, the Tories were well on their way to an historic fourth victory.

Taxi for Kinnock! If there's one thing electorates on both sides of the Atlantic resent, it's premature triumphalism.

Which is why Obama's making a big mistake trying to turn his official nomination party into a replica of a Bruce Springsteen homecoming concert in New Jersey.

He appears to have learned nothing from his whistle-stop tour of Europe, complete with Kennedy-esque oration in Berlin and fake presidential seal of office. It was supposed to portray him as a world statesman, to allay doubts about his inexperience of foreign affairs.

Coming from Illinois, you'd have thought he'd be familiar with the expression: 'How will it play in Peoria?'

That's the litmus test used by Broadway producers and the Mad Men of Madison Avenue for any new show or washing powder. Peoria, Illinois, is the legendary small town considered a bellwether of Middle American public opinion.

Forget New York. If you can make it in Peoria, you can make it anywhere.

A compliant, star-struck mainstream media scrambled its network big guns for this blatant, lese-presidential stunt. But on Main Street, America, Obama's grandstanding in Europe went down like a bucket of cold sick.

In Peoria and hundreds of other similar towns, what they saw was not a President-in-Waiting but an uppity kid with delusions of grandeur.

The expected bounce in the polls never happened. Worse, for the Democrat standard bearer, the Republican 'no-hoper' John McCain closed the gap to two percentage points simply by staying home and treating the whole, over-hyped PR exercise with disdain.

McCain said he'd prefer to become President before he started behaving like one, thus turning conventional wisdom on its head.

On our side of the water, there's an assumption that if you act as if you've already got the job, it's yours by right.

Not so in the USA. They might loathe the incumbent, but they revere the office. Obama's presumptive glad-handing of foreign leaders was seen in many quarters as an insult to America itself.

Wonder boy Barack may be Europe's choice for next President but that counts for nothing in the swing states he has to win if he is to enter the White House.

America remains a deeply small 'c' conservative country. Obama's other big mistake was to sneer at 'frightened' Middle Americans whom he accused of 'clinging to God and guns'. It might play well with the liberal media, but it doesn't play in Peoria.

Doubts about Obama started to surface towards the end of the primary process. He lost seven out of the last eight contests, many of them blue-collar states which he'll need to win to become President.

He's even in trouble in rust-belt Michigan, next door to his home state of Illinois, despite Detroit's depressed economy, which has shed almost half a million jobs under Bush.

McCain has played a canny, low-key game, not least because he lacks Obama's budget, boosted by millions of internet donors, and because the networks have decided that Barack is the only show in town. The Republican's use of advertising time has been well-targeted.

In the past couple of weeks, McCain commercials have poked fun at Obama as the 'biggest celebrity in the world' drawing comparisons with airhead Paris Hilton. The suggestion is that behind the glittering faÁade, there's nothing there.

It's worked. The Obama camp hasn't been quite sure how to handle ridicule, which is always a more potent weapon than outright abuse. Instead of laughing it off, they've reacted angrily, indicating that their candidate isn't great under pressure.

McCain brushes aside Democrat attacks on his age with good humour, despite his notoriously prickly reputation.

He manages to pull off the self-deprecation which is a vital ingredient of any candidate's make-up. Reagan had it in spades, Bill Clinton convincingly faked it, even Dubya makes jokes at his own expense. Laughing at himself doesn't come as second nature to Obama.

And while the Messiah clings to a slim lead overall, he trails McCain on a range of policies from energy to national security.

Significantly, a new poll says that nearly half the public feel they've 'heard too much' about Obama lately and a quarter report that the overexposure has left them with a less, not more, favourable view of the Democratic nominee.

That's something for his camp to ponder as they approach the convention.

I'm not saying Obama can't, or won't, win. But were I a gambling man, I'd be looking at both of them on an each-way bet.

It's too late to call off the victory rally in Denver, but too early to take an Obama Presidency for granted - not least because the Colorado Coronation in the Broncos' stadium has all the potential to backfire on the same scale as Kinnochio's Sheffield spectacular.