It’s been a long campaign, and there are still five solid months left before the election. I’m more than willing to give candidates a pass on what they might say on the stump. After all, they literally working around the clock, traveling across the country, trying to deal with never-ending news cycles and millions of bloggers parsing their every word.

With that disclaimer, John Fund of the WSJ points out that Barack Obama has proven that, yes, he is in fact human.

As smart and credentialed as he is, Sen. Obama is often an indifferent speaker without a teleprompter. He has large gaps in his knowledge base, and is just as likely to dig in and embrace a policy misstatement as abandon it. ABC reporter Jake Tapper calls him “a one-man gaffe machine.”

I think what people are seeing, and will increasingly see as this campaign moves into high gear, is a candidate that, quite simply, has not been battle-tested. He’s only run for office 5 times. Two of those times he ran as the incumbent. He’s never had to face the grueling schedule and scrutiny he’s finding in this campaign.

This doesn’t necessarily make him unqualified to be president. All it means is that the Democrats are on the verge of nominating a relatively inexperienced candidate who is showing signs of wear on the campaign trail. The Democratic Party shouldn’t underestimate the enormity of the task they are asking of Obama. The next 5 months will reveal a lot more about the true identity of Obama.