TED WILLIAMS could hit a baseball. Conventional wisdom isn’t always wrong. But since by definition it is the product of a committee, seldom is it all right. Such is the case of the presidential election, which as far as I’m concerned, the press has pretty much gotten all wrong.

First is the notion that a long, strident Democratic primary campaign has been bad for the country or democracy. By historical standards this has been tame. Barack Obama is nothing if not a gentleman, and under real competition Hillary Clinton’s speechmaking has gone from scripted to spirited. Neither of these candidates, nor John McCain, nor the many also-rans, could run to be a 19th Century alderman’s coat holder on their mud-slinging skills, and the interest they have roused has been good for democracy.

This election has woken up the country, and with it the world. The London press, with its quaint customs, is following it almost as closely as the American press, and many previous critics of the United States are awed by an election that has come down to a great man, an African-American (in the true sense) and a woman whose determination in running a gauntlet of last chances has made people all but forget whose wife she is.

A second item of wisdom that is going to fall is the notion –– fostered, I regret to say, by members of the press strategizing for the Democrats –– that a drawn-out Democratic contest will favor the Republicans. Again, by historical standards, four months of primaries and caucuses amount to little. In 1968, Robert Kennedy had only that day clinched the Democratic nomination on June 4, when he was shot. Many presidents came out of bitter convention-floor fights. Lincoln, to name one.

I expect a gracious concession by the Democratic loser, and with the exception of a scenario in which Mr. Obama’s supporters believed that the nomination had been stolen by ill-gotten means, that most of the Democratic loser’s votes will go to the Democratic nominee in November. If Mr. Obama finally tumbles like Sisyphus because the party believes it can only win with Mrs. Clinton, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright may become the most hated black man in black America — but most black voters will vote for Mrs. Clinton.

A third item of wisdom to fall is the notion that Iowa and New Hampshire, being mostly white, have no business going first, thereby exercising undue influence over the outcome. Their value has always been that, being small states, they force presidential candidates to run like aldermancy candidates. It is the fact that Iowa is rural, white, Protestant and traditional –– and liked what it saw in Mr. Obama up-close — that allowed him to transform American politics.

More precisely, Iowa let Mr. Obama teach us that America has changed, which I believe he understood before the fact. But he could not have begun with a win in a big state, nor begun as successfully by winning a small state with a big black vote. If he becomes president in this or some other year he will owe it to Iowa.

A fourth item to fall is campaign-finance reform, which amounts to the citizens of a democracy being obliged to contribute public money to candidates who are odious to them, while being prevented from giving freely to candidates they wish to support. By out-raising everyone else based on Internet-solicited donations averaging less than $100, Mr. Obama demonstrated that Big Money can be beaten by bright ideas. The public-financing system remains on the books, but Mr. McCain, who helped to create it, would abandon it if he could. Its days are numbered.

Many conservatives don’t trust Mr. McCain, and fear Mr. Obama more than Mrs. Clinton. Mr. McCain has been too often apostate to their orthodoxies. What they don’t realize is that the oldest candidate in the race has given a damaged Republican brand a needed new and younger image, as Ronald Reagan did in 1980.

Conservatives’ fear of Mr. Obama is that, whereas Mrs. Clinton is a known politician who they think they could hold their noses and deal with, Mr. Obama is at heart a leftist who might have the political gifts to re-brand the Democratic image for a generation. The Clinton Democrats are essentially empty vessels who want to win elections. The Obama Democrats might stand for something. Travels with William Ayres, Bernadine Dohrn and Jeremiah Wright are all the proof conservatives need that it is a menace.

I do not agree with the assumptions that underlie this fear, which leads to a fifth item of conventional wisdom that needs to fall. It is that Barack Obama is to the country what Gov. Deval Patrick is to Massachusetts: A white electorate falls for a black candidate with the gift of gab but no gift for governing.

It is true that voters hot-to-trot to buy what we’ll call an African-American Prius should kick the wheels, just as they would a Ford’s or a Lincoln’s. But likening Mr. Obama to Mr. Patrick is based on race, obviously so; and it’s not even a good analogy.

Mr. Patrick is very bright –– an intellectual challenge to interview, which is a rarity among politicians. But politically Mr. Obama is much more astute. Moreover, what Mr. Patrick seems to have been hiding when he ran for governor in 2006 was that at heart he is of the left. (Subcategories: selective corporate pals and hacks’ Santa Claus!) My intuition tells me that what Mr. Obama is not really hiding at all is that at heart he is not of the left.

It is true that like Chester A. Arthur and Harry Truman, Mr. Obama came out of a political machine with some curious methods and orthodoxies. Arthur (New York Republican machine) and Truman (Kansas City Democratic Pendergast machine) were derided for this in life, but in death are nowise remembered for their machine connections.

Mr. Obama is fairly to be judged for his associations and scrutinized for political positions derived therefrom. He is also to be judged by the fact that, whereas Arthur and Truman were men of experience in government, and 51 and 60 when they became president, Barack Obama would be 47, and at this point he still has relatively small experience in government. Yet the times we are in compare in their awful complexity to the day Franklin Roosevelt died.

David A. Mittell Jr. is a member of The Journal’s editorial board.