For Barack Obama, the crucial moment came one cold night in January 2008, when the one-term senator's unexpectedly decisive triumph in the Iowa caucuses set him on the path to an epoch-making victory. For Nick Clegg, it happened last week, when he stepped back from his debate podium to address a retired toxicologist from Cheshire. (...)

These parallels aren't perfect, of course. They may even strike some readers as absurd. But what Clegg's rightwing and leftwing critics miss, as do predictably sarcastic journalists, is that this is precisely the point. To say that Nick Clegg is the British Barack Obama is not to suggest that he is an exact duplicate of the original, American Obama, transplanted to our shores. He's a British version. The US likes its heroes to be inspiring underdogs who battle vast forces to realise their dreams. We like ours to be not-particularly-inspiring underdogs who never do quite realise their dreams - think Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards, or Mallory on Everest, or the Beagle 2 Mars probe. Thanks to various unfortunate psephological realities, Nick Clegg almost certainly won't realise his dreams either. (...)

Impressionists and caricaturists, meanwhile, complain that they can't properly satirise Clegg, because he has few distinguishing features. But that, again, is the point: Clegg has a transparent quality, a nondescriptness, that allows each of us to project on to him our deepest aspirations. These last few days of Cleggmania have seen him compared also to Winston Churchill, the epitome of British stubbornness - one poll suggested that Clegg was the most popular party leader since Churchill - and to Che Guevara, the epitome of stylish beret-wearing. (...)