The downsides of a long presidential campaign are many and familiar: It's expensive. It's exhausting. Just after a candidate had completed years of inhuman panhandling, speechifying, airlining, pandering, and attacking, we ask them to take the oath of office and give it their all. The good side is that it tests the candidates in ways that are useful and gives us plenty of time to think about whether they'd be right for the job.

Right now, the election feels like it's gone on forever. The world today is different from when the candidates began their quest a couple of years ago. The situation in Iraq looks better; the economy looks decidedly worse. One of the early columns in Condé Nast Portfolio boldly predicted $50 a barrel oil. Oh, well.

And things may change yet again by the fall. Some unknown natural disaster may beset us like the Chinese earthquake. There could be another subprime-like crisis lurking. But I wonder: From what we know now about the candidates, what's the best case you could make for both Barack Obama and John McCain? By best case, I mean assuming that you're not hyperpartisan, you're moderate, and willing to strip away the hype. By this, I'm saying that you're hopeful that Obama could bring some degree of racial reconciliation and improve America's image overseas but you're not delusional enough to think his mere presence in the Oval Office will bring about an era of good feelings. Who's better?

Age before beauty, let's start with McCain. Is the Arizona senator the reformer of 2000? In many ways, no. He's returned to his roots as a tax-cutting Republican, and less of a deficit hawk (people forget that back in the '90s he opposed the first President Bush's tax cuts). He'd keep the current Bush tax cuts in place and he has a lot in mind, including getting rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax—a bunch of credits so people can buy health care—and a lot of corporate cuts. To me, that seems like a sure way to run up the deficit.

But not so fast. You can make a case that McCain would have the best chance of doing something about entitlement spending. He's left his plans deliberately vague, while Obama has tossed out specific proposals like raising the cap on wages subject to Social Security taxation. McCain's history as a spending hawk, and on any number of bipartisan initiatives, bodes better than Obama's on entitlements—not that Obama hasn't demonstrated some real seriousness on the issue.

On the war, it all depends on how you see it. The McCain case is that we had a crappy strategy for years, but now it's finally working and we should give it time. The Obama case is that it can't work, it's up to the Iraqis, and we have to get out as soon as possible. Who's better? That depends on whether you think the war is winnable and worth the cost. By November, we'll know a lot more.

The economy overall? If you think higher levels of taxation are by themselves deadly, then you want to go with McCain. But Obama, I think, has had more nuanced economic policies on things like tech and the mortgage-and-credit mess, especially the latter, where McCain had a laissez-faire attitude for a long time and came late to the party.

On the social issues, it again depends on what you believe. If the idea of any legal restrictions on abortion freaks you out, Obama's your guy. A McCain court is sure to allow Roe v. Wade to be substantially chipped at or overturned. On the environment, my guess is that we'll get a cap-and-trade bill and some limits on greenhouse gas emissions under either President Obama or President McCain.

One of the lessons of 9/11 is that the world can change overnight. You can't anticipate what the next president will face. So you have to look beyond policy papers and ask how they'd respond in an unforeseen crisis and adapt to new challenges. It goes without saying that by being imprisoned in North Vietnam, McCain met an inhuman challenge and handled it with superhuman courage and dignity. But given what we know about him, would he be better than Obama at dealing with some unseen domestic or foreign challenge? I don't think we know the answer to that.

And it's not unreasonable to ask whether McCain, who would be 72 by the time he took the oath of office, would be up to the task. He's shown enormous physical stamina in the campaign and there's no sign that he's off his game. But 72 is 72, and it's worth seeing what comes out of the medical records released this week to make judgment about what McCain might be capable of handling in a couple of years.

Who'd be a better president? A lot of it depends on your basic beliefs coming into that question. But if your beliefs are centrist, moderated, and infused with doubt, than the answer isn't so clear and the campaign isn't too long.