Now that Obama is the presumptive nominee of our party, people on the left and the right are engaged in trying to parse his appeal, even as the candidate himself tries to broaden that appeal. Republicans seem to be flailing, as Karl Rove did when caricaturing the candidate as some kind of playboy of the western world — babe on his arm, martini in his hand — as if that were a bad thing. (Note to Rove: see the extremely popular Oceans Eleven series for further evidence that most men want to be that guy, and most women want to be with him. Then try new tack.) And some on the left seem determined to pigeon-hole him as the uber-liberal of their dreams, even as Obama is making compromises that piss them off.

But whatever your feelings or expectations about his candidacy, even if you hold out some bizarre hope that McCain can magically regain what’s left of his character as he changes his positions on the treatment of detainees, off-shore drilling and a host of other issues that he used to show un-GOP like common sense about, even if you can forgive his embrace of George Bush, even if you’re not afraid of his scary wife, you’ve got to be worried about Obama’s babe factor.

Forget about Scarlett Johansson (if you can, for just one moment); I’m talking about regular, mortal, sensible women. One I know quite well met the senator recently; it was a serious meeting with issues of import being discussed. She was impressed with how present he seemed, how attentive to her questions, even as she became aware that she was gazing at him the way Nancy Reagan used to gaze at her husband, and was smiling so much her face hurt when her audience was over.

After the meeting she sent her daughter a text message, describing the candidate in one word: McDreamy. This is the nickname the good women of Grey’s Anatomy bestowed on the doctor played by Patrick Dempsey (who played a similar kind of catch, a lawyer this time, in the Disney fairy tale send-up Enchanted). If Obama’s campaign was worried about his appeal to women after his battles with Hillary, the reaction of this rational, professional businesswoman might indicate that there is not much opposition there that greater exposure to his dreaminess can’t conquer.

She did say she thought he’d been smoking, though he wasn’t holding a martini.