When Senator Obama stepped away from the podium after delivering an extraordinarily poised speech before 200,000 people in Berlin on Thursday, the airy idealism of his oratory, along with the luminous beauty of the scene and the princely demeanor of the man himself, was enough to lead the ordinary viewer to wonder if he might be watching a virtual reality game in which an avatar goes to Europe as a presidential candidate, draws an enormous crowd, and dissolves decades of anti-American sentiment in less than an hour.

“People of Berlin — people of the world — this is our moment,” Mr. Obama declared at around the 34-minute mark. “This is our time.” It was the foreign policy version of his weird, “Twilight Zone” slogan fashioned for domestic consumption (“We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the change we seek”), and it was an extraordinary thing to say. For whether or not it was “their” moment, neither the people of Berlin nor the people of the world outside America were capable of making it anything but momentary for the simple reason that they cannot vote in an American election.

NBC news anchor Brian Williams, who met Mr. Obama as he strolled away from the stage, was quick to seize on the sentence, effectively the culmination of the speech. Was that the “phraseology” he would like it to be remembered for, he asked.

The senator agreed that it was. “You know, I think that captures what I was trying to communicate. Here in Berlin, where essentially the West was forged out of World War II, we have now the opportunity to join not only with Germany but with all of Europe and countries of good will, to try to reach out and try to do for the world what we did for Berlin.”

Then the topic shifted, and although I dutifully waded through hours of discussion about Mr. Obama’s trip on Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and the networks, I was surprised not to hear anyone else pick up on that key — and on the face of it, nonsensical — phrase.

But it was addressed, albeit in June, by Christopher Hitchens during a group discussion about popular culture and politics on C-Span. Recalling how he had heard the black American novelist James Baldwin tell a group of English leftists in the 1960s that Richard Nixon was effectively their president too, Mr. Hitchens stated: “Everyone around the world has secretly always wanted one thing: a vote in the American elections. And Obama is, in a funny way, sort of promising that — another promise he won’t be able to keep, among many.”

But was Mr. Obama’s electoral pitch to the world mere flowery rhetoric? Or was there something more calculated going on? It’s a truism that young people get all worked up about elections, only to fail to show up at the voting booth. But in the age of Facebook and Twitter and instant global communication, the Obama campaign could be betting that, in the run-up to Election Day, some of its base — young college graduates, many of whom have politically committed friends (or “friends”) abroad — will be urged by their foreign pals via e-mail, Twitter, and cell phone to make sure they vote as an act of global solidarity.

During the same June discussion, Mr. Hitchens described Mr. Obama as a “megalomaniac narcissist,” a theme that had begun to weave itself into the television news commentary, if not so bluntly, by the time Mr. Obama reached Paris. The host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” Chris Matthews, repeatedly wondered if Mr. Obama had “spiked the ball,” football-player style, by appearing to act as if he were already president.

On “Hannity and Colmes,” Fox News gleefully invited the British journalist Gerard Baker to read aloud a column (“He Ventured Forth to Bring Light to the World”) he wrote for the London Times in which he expertly parodied Mr. Obama’s messianic tendencies by writing about him as if he were indeed straight out of the Bible. Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” was on a great run with “Obama Quest: Fellowship of the Rhine,” on Comedy Central, but Mr. Baker was definitely the satirist of the week.

Overall, the traditional news outlets — the networks, “The Charlie Rose Show,” etc. — came out looking better than cable. Yes, they could be dull and predictable in their choice of “experts” (Mr. Rose had Jim Hoagland, Robin Wright, and Ethan Bronner), but they were a relief from ideological warriors (Fox’s Sean Hannity), professional sneerers (CNBC’s Keith Olbermann), and self-adoring motormouths (Mr. Matthews). Best of all was Mr. Obama’s 25-minute sit-down interview with NBC’s Brian Williams in Germany, in which he displayed his thoughtful, professorial side, yet could not quite mask the anger in his eyes as Mr. Williams continually pressed him to concede the success of America’s military “surge” in Iraq.

Here is where Mr. McCain finally came in. Despite the supernaturally prosaic visuals of his campaign (standing in front of cheese counters in supermarkets, etc.), which were used to good-natured comic effect on “The Daily Show” and derided with elitist venom by Mr. Olbermann, Mr. McCain’s insistence that it was a matter of national pride, not to mention vast strategic importance, that we definitively win the war and leave not according to a timetable but with victory and honor intact, was persuasive.

On that subject, Mr. Obama could also be intelligent and articulate — as he was with Mr. Williams. But for all the passion he arouses, the senator seemed disturbingly dispassionate, even disinterested, about vindicating America’s reputation in Iraq. Despite all the “this is our time, this is our moment” talk in Berlin, here was a tangible, as opposed to metaphorical, “moment” — the moment for America to snatch triumph from the jaws of disaster — yet he seemed strangely indifferent to it.

In its messy, interminable, often mind-numbing way, television had done at least part of its job.

bbernhard@nysun.com