Times Online: US Political Scene - Cool cat Barack Obama must count on his nine lives - by Andrew Sullivan

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If you were to come up with a very short phrase summing up Barack Obama’s core identity, you could do a lot worse than the rat pack-era term “cool cat”. The coolness is now legendary: the poise during every political earthquake in the campaign, the steady willingness not to take the Clinton bait, the refusal even to raise an eyebrow at the Palin circus and that elegant lope as he walks into a state dinner.

The paradox is: in today’s populist, emotional climate, coolness can be eclipsed in the political drama and thereby rendered moot. In many ways Sarah Palin is the extreme counter-example. She plays a short game. She deploys no substantive policy content and no interest whatever in actual government. But she channels pure emotion, identity and rage very effectively in a country where unemployment is soaring. As such, she is a political nightmare, someone whom most Americans would never entrust with actual responsibility, but a cultural phenomenon who thereby wields political power.