Presidential campaigns in the United States never fail to produce a comic collection of characters bent on proving that they’re not up to the job. This time around it’s even crazier, with debates and disclosures of indecency on the hour and the imminent fall from grace of whoever happens to be the current frontrunner. The entertainment is being provided mostly by the Republicans, but that’s only because no one in his own party is chasing Obama’s job. Or even his job-in-waiting, with Hillary unlikely to become just another Joe over a bigger opportunity four years down a road in sad need of repair.

Obama’s focus is on the poor suckers Romney is hungering to put out of work and who Gingrich will try to lure to bed. The President is brilliant, but he’s boring. His vision extends no further than a fair union wage and a bicycle in every Solyndra-stickered carport. He was born, we’re still not sure where, to take care of the little people … however hard they are to find in an obese society.

Let’s not talk about Mitt Romney. He is not going to be President. He goes on and on about his success and sets himself up as an example of what someone back from self-deportation might become, but really … $250 million? Is that it, Mitt? There are lottery winners who could buy your portfolio. Anyway, we don’t believe you, certainly don’t like you and we don’t think God is on your side.

The other contenders have fallen by the wayside out of memory loss, 999 with a little 69 on the side and just generally being too weird or shaky to be trusted with a hand on the button.

Which brings us to Newt Gingrich and the Great White Hope. This guy is a serious contender, even when he isn’t serious. Gingrich is anything but boring. In many ways, he reminds us of the comedian Jonathon Winters; either on-stage and awesome or suited up and slamming the walls in an insane asylum. Talk to those who have worked with him, and you’ll learn that they never want to work with him again. But for all the wrong reasons. Bureaucrats with a leaning for the linear have problems dealing with those who can come up with an idea on the spur of the moment and use it to dismantle the existing infrastructure. But this is the very characteristic that makes great leaders great and masses their followers behind them.

Enough, and now to the point. Out of all of the above truths emerges a tactic that will surely guarantee Obama his second term.

First he should stick to his grow-the-economy guns. He should continue to make each of us feel important and worthy. But he should also close the deal with something big we can all share and support. Something so big that it scares us; challenging the depths of our character. Add to the day-to-day a dare-to-dream vision of grand proportions.

Here it is: the closing-debate clincher from Obama:

“I promise that every American who wants to work will have a job. Every American who is hurt or becomes ill will have the finest health care regardless of their ability to pay. Finally and within my second term … and together as Americans … we will put Newt Gingrich on the moon.”

Yes we can.