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At first glance, this American election is all about change and therefore all about hope. The Democratic winner in Iowa, Barack Obama, presents himself as change and hope incarnate. Hillary Clinton, who nipped Mr. Obama in New Hampshire, insisted that he merely talked change while she had a record of doing it. John Edwards, quite arguably, is promoting more change than either, and ipso facto more hope. One of these will win the nomination, so yes, Virginia, the Democrats are a party of change.

But then Mike Huckabee, the Republican winner in Iowa, also declaims about change. Liberals regard him as reactionary, and the change he promotes as retrogression. Libertarian Ron Paul, a nominal Republican, is the goofiest candidate of change of all. Even Mitt Romney runs as the candidate of change. His Establishment credentials pose an obstacle, but then there could be no more Establishment candidate than Ms. Clinton. Still, aren't the Clintons the Establishment of change? To hear her tell it, she's been dealing in nothing else for decades now; all her experience is experience at accomplishing change.

After seven years of an unpopular administration, the public craves change. But there's change and then there's change. Specifically, there's Old Change and there's New Change.

Old Change is merely partisan change. The party that was out comes in, or the party that's been in renews itself enough to stay in. New Change, however, is "postpartisan." That's a new term for a somewhat new thing.

RIVAL POSTPARTISANS

By "postpartisan" I don't mean "non-partisan." All these candidates rely on intensely partisan bases. How could they not? In this troubled epoch of American politics, the partisanship is pervasive and bitter. Democrats today, whatever their differences, share a hatred of George Bush and Dick Cheney surpassing even their former loathing of Richard Nixon. (Similarly, many Republicans detest Ms. Clinton as her husband's ally and relic.) I won't exaggerate; it's not 1860. Still, party antipathy has risen to Threat Level Orange. Hatred isn't a moderate sentiment, but it focuses the mind on the question of who's aptest to defeat the enemy. Partisan voters crave a winner.

Well and good, except that it's not just partisans out there. There are also millions of independents, who tend to be anti-partisan. They've had it with the poisonous bickering that has infected Washington lo these many years. They too are unhappy with the status quo, but they see both parties as part of the problem, neither as the potential solution. They're looking for New Change.

This puts the candidates in a quandary. Organization, zeal and money all flow from your core partisan constituencies. Yet you also have to "reach out" to win. This year, that means that you must somehow appeal to both intensely "partisan" sentiments for change and intensely "postpartisan" ones.

Exhibit A of how to do this is Mr. Obama. He has made himself the favourite Democratic candidate alike of independents and of the party's intensely partisan anti-war left (those who supported Howard Dean in 2004). To these partisans, Mr. Obama offers himself as the candidate who is most their own on just this issue that matters to them most. His early and intransigent opposition to the war enables him to present himself as fearlessly independent and as standing apart from and ahead of his party's Establishment, but in exactly the direction that its fiercest partisans want it to go.

But Mr. Obama also plays to independents. The war apart, the rest of his program is no further to the left than Ms. Clinton's. On some issues, he's actually more flexible and pragmatic than she is. (He has endorsed merit pay for teachers, for example.) Above all, he presents himself as the candidate of New Change. Because the war is so unpopular, his fierce opposition to it doesn't prevent him from promoting himself as a uniter, not a divider. He's brilliantly cast his own person as a metaphor for his political vision. Having harmonized all of America with him (black and white, immigrant and native-born), he's the perfect candidate to establish social harmony. Crucially, while presenting his agenda as new and inspiring he casts it as non-threatening, even as traditional. He'll get the country back on track and recall it to its own best practices. He's not just about evoking hope (the word constantly on his lips) but also about allaying anxiety. He's the have-your-cake-and-eat-it candidate; his dentistry will be painless.

FEMININITY RESURFACES

Hillary Clinton too is all for change ("Countdown to Change" is her slogan) but when push comes to shove, she's a candidate of Old Change. As a Democratic president replacing a Republican one, she would promote predictably Democratic policies. She too tries to stake out postpartisanship (with Mr. Obama as her rival, she has to) but her efforts here are fairly lame. There is nothing postpartisan about the vision she offers. Unlike Mr. Obama, she wouldn't be the first of her race or even the first of her family in the White House. She would, of course, be the first of her gender, and that clearly helped her in New Hampshire.

Still, she has no other aura of New Change with which to counter Mr. Obama's. For America's first credible female (and feminist) candidate for president, it all comes down to gender: Biology is destiny. (She had to rediscover her feminine side, publicly and painfully, to attract the female votes required for her to win New Hampshire.) Otherwise, Ms. Clinton is same old, same old — and has strong partisan "negatives" to prove it. She could certainly still emerge victorious, but her postpartisanship deficit hurts even with partisans, since partisans want to back a winner. John Edwards, similarly, with his strident economic populism, is strictly a candidate of Old Change.

Among Republicans, the candidates of change that matter are Mike Huckabee and — this may surprise you — John McCain. (Rudy Giuliani matters but doesn't qualify as a candidate of change; he's the candidate of vigilance who, despite his efforts to diversify, will likely stand or fall on that issue.) But Mr. Huckabee is a candidate of change from so deep in evangelical right field that his is a change that's just not going to happen.

THE OLD IS BORN ANEW

That leaves John McCain, who's so old that he's new, and so firmly rooted in his party (but without having sold his soul to it) that he has achieved postpartisanship. No Democrat has been as critical of his party as Mr. McCain has been of the Bush administration: of its handling of the war, of its countenancing of torture, of its tax cuts. He has long supported campaign finance reform and has rankled most Republicans on immigration. Unlike Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama, he is a "maverick" — which, come to think of it, is an old-fashioned term for postpartisan. Republican enough so that most Republicans would stick with him, he's independent enough to attract independents. True, there are doubts about him: The early floundering of his campaign showed his management skills to poor advantage. Still, he's made an amazing comeback.

Above all, Mr. McCain has genuine stature. He is what he is and what he's always been. He's the only figure in American politics who never seems to be in over his head. A hero and a patriot, he's just the kind of candidate who has little chance in "normal" times (2000 yielded George Bush) but to whom one might turn in a time of crisis. In a world beset by great dangers, he invites Americans to rely on his unshakable devotion to their country and its principles and to draw comfort from his strength. No wonder the Democrats would rather not face him, even in an election in which they hold the best cards.

What does the electorate want? The partisans, as always, want power and revenge; the people as a whole want reassurance. A fading economy, high energy prices, a weak dollar, nagging concern about global warming, the ongoing threat of global terror, two long running wars, success in neither of which is imminent — the dismal beat goes on. Like their grandparents in 1932, mired in the Great Depression, Americans want to hear that they have nothing to fear but fear itself. Like their parents in 1980 — buffeted by runaway inflation, the failed Jimmy Carter presidency and the humiliating Iranian hostage crisis — they crave the optimism of a new Ronald Reagan. Hope is in the air. But while some few youths itch for the excitement of social transformation, most Americans long for nothing more than going about their business without so much anxiety.

Clifford Orwin is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.