Enough with “enough.”

Is Barack Obama black enough? Is Hillary Clinton feminine enough?

Those were actual questions asked Monday night during the Democratic presidential hopefuls debate on YouTube. Happily, the candidates were, well, political enough not to respond: “Gee, I don’t know, bro. Maybe I should go pop another blackness pill.” Or, “I’m fem enough to beat the band, buster, thanks to that extra womb I just had implanted.”

No, Senator Obama answered instead, “You know, when I’m catching a cab in Manhattan … in the past, I think I’ve given my credentials.” Senator Clinton, for her part, said, “I couldn’t run as anything other than a woman.” Well, duh.

It’s not that Mrs. Clinton is dumb. The question is dumb. Worse, it’s unfair. You never hear: “John Edwards, you’re handsome. But are you handsome enough?” “Mike Gravel, you’ve got a funny last name, but … funny enough?

If we asked enough “enough” questions, maybe they would start sounding less suspicious. But the reason we only hear it with senators Clinton and Obama is because of the stereotypes still dogging women and blacks.

“In America, black history is really sort of boiled down to a history of suffering,” a Swarthmore professor of history, Timothy Burke, said. “So if you don’t come out of that, you’re an unsettling figure.” You’re especially unsettling if you don’t look like you’ve suffered one iota. That’s why the half-white, Harvard-educated senator brought up the cabbies-don’t-stop-for-me-either story — to show that he suffers for his blackness, too. He understood that that was the real question being asked. When Mrs. Clinton gets asked about her feminine credentials, there’s another backstory at work. “Women in politics can be motherly,” Mr. Burke said, citing Golda Meir. “Or they can be the masculine woman.” He mentioned Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno.

Mrs. Clinton doesn’t fit into either of these categories. She’s more like the new executive woman: professional, attractive, unapologetically smart. “Younger men have been working with that type of woman most of their lives,” Mr. Burke said. “She’s the sort of desirable woman down the hall that men sort of have a crush on.” (They do? That’s great.) But those women are harder to find in American politics, leaving Mrs. Clinton without an easy slot to fit into. In marketing terms, she’s a product without a recognizable brand.

“People always identify with brands,” marketing consultant Travis Sheridan said. “If you drive a Kia or a Toyota or a Bentley, each one of those cars has a different social identifier to it.” Customers know exactly what they’re getting. But what if you’re a Bentlota? Or a Volks Royce? That’s what senators Clinton and Obama are — new breeds.

People don’t know what to make of them yet.

Trying to get a handle on exactly how Americans are perceiving the top six candidates, the director of trend-spotting at J. Walter Thompson, Ann Mack, conducted an almost surreal survey. She asked 681 voters, “Which characters would the candidates be if they were on ‘Gilligan’s Island’?”

Yes. That’s what she asked. Okay? Okay.

Overwhelmingly, Mr. Obama was seen as the Professor. Mrs. Clinton came back as Mrs. Thurston Howell III. For the record, Mayor Giuliani and, to a lesser extent, Senator McCain both came back as the Skipper, Mitt Romney was trending toward Thurston Howell himself (which would make him Mrs. Clinton’s husband — weird), and Senator Edwards was, I’m sorry to report, Gilligan. In another part of the survey, when voters were asked what car the candidates would be, the only really definitive answers came back about Mrs. Clinton. She was seen as a Lexus or Jaguar. And if she were a restaurant, Ms. Mack said, “she’d be a Morton’s Steak House or, to a lesser extent, an Olive Garden.”

This makes Mrs. Clinton a millionaire ditz with great handling and a generous salad bar. Mr. Obama is a smart guy stuck on an island.

Is the Professor black enough? Is the Olive Garden/Lexus lady feminine enough? Are we all out of our minds trying to slice and dice and categorize the candidates until we have a one-word answer that defines their entire existence and tells us which one to vote for?

Yes.

That’s the end of this article. Yes. Until we stop trying to pigeonhole our candidates — are they this enough, that enough? — we’ll miss everything else we should be paying attention to.

Yes.