The coolest, and luckiest, of them all

Barack Obama is very lucky.

Is it cold out? Consult a brass monkey of your acquaintance. The reply will be a couple of octaves above middle C. It's a good thing Barack Obama is going to visit soon.

Now I don't think he can actually change the weather. Despite the sometimes quaint Wordsworthian nature of his rhetoric -- the planet healing, the oceans' rise slowing stuff -- he cannot still the elements or command the wind and sky. But Lord, he sure makes people feel warm.

Barack Obama is very lucky. He makes those people who support him, even in countries other than his own, feel better that they support him. Perhaps it's because it connects them with the historic nature of his achievement. It is not a small thing to be the first black president of the United States.

Who does not feel warm all over about being on the right side of that liberating milestone? There's a little harmless self-validation in being an Obama fan.

Mr. Obama is also very lucky in that wonderful disposition of his. He's so cool, he's hot. I do not know if it has always been so, but, in our times, being cool is better than being smart, beautiful or rich, better even than all three together. Everyone wants to be seen with the cool guy.

Do not underestimate the immense political value of being seen as the coolest leader in the world. Being cool is Mr. Obama's armour against a multitude of woes. He will be spared, for one thing, the mockery and derision administered so remorselessly to George Bush. From the day Mr. Bush walked into the White House, the shallow smartasses at the joke factories of the American networks had uncool George as their easiest target. It cost nothing, certainly no exertion of talent or intellect, to make fun of poor George, the uncool Texan of a million witless punchlines. It was the humour of the blissfully smug -- cheap, obvious and self-righteous.

But the lazy, predictable and mostly cowardly front men of late-night comedy -- bland Jay Leno, cranky David Letterman and smirky Jon Stewart -- are not going to do a hit on the cool guy. Saturday Night Live, which is to satire what Fresca is to Napoleon brandy, will flash a toothless skit about Mr. Obama (just to maintain their creds, you understand), but it will prefer to bask in his light rather than bash it. Most of the so-called political comedians -- Margaret Cho, Bill Maher, the great brigade of comment comedy -- are windsocks of self-congratulatory progressiveness. They will never stray from what is "in," and no one's more in than Mr. Obama.

Coolness is its own persuasiveness. Mr. Obama is so much at the edge of this moment that neither a retreat on some of his campaign file nor the ferocity of the worldwide economic meltdown can chill the thrill. Cool triumphs over everything.

The glossy magazines worship cool, too. Mr. Obama has been on the cover of so many and written up so effusively that American magazine journalism is taking on the steamy quality of Entertainment Tonight voiceovers on whatever is "awesome" this week. Hagiography as reportage. Adoramus te, Obama, they chant. Love ya, O. Not much chance of an exposé on an Obama administration from this quarter. It would be so uncool.

Coolness is its own persuasiveness. Mr. Obama is so much at the edge of this moment that neither a retreat on some of his campaign file nor the ferocity of the worldwide economic meltdown can chill the thrill. Cool triumphs over everything. Style is this man's charisma, and this man's style let him glide through or over every obstacle, every embarrassment, without the slightest halt in his so-smooth progress. He keeps as his defence secretary Mr. Bush's defence secretary, and adds to that delicious irony the appointment of "ready to take that 3 a.m. call" Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. The Bush policy on Iraq -- judging from these appointments -- looks like nothing's going to change.

It doesn't matter. Mr. Obama, light as air, transcends the politics of harassment and reprisal that was all that the press and entertainment media knew for the past eight years. "Gotcha" is a dirty word in Washington now. Who wants to "gotcha" a man who does a fist bump?

Finally, Mr. Obama is very lucky -- he's following George Bush. That, perhaps almost as much as the cool, really, really helps him. He is seen by so many who have invested so intensely and so irrationally in demonizing Mr. Bush that his entry into the presidency is, for them, almost a rapture. Did I write almost?

Some of that same powerful transport has found a reception in Canada. So however cold it may be, the day he alights on Parliament Hill will be for many as if the wildest fevers of Al Gore have stoked a fire in their hearts. The cool guy will warm the coldest city.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Rex Murphy, "The coolest, and luckiest, of them all." Globe & Mail (January 19, 2009): A19.

Reprinted with permission of Rex Murphy.

THE AUTHOR

Rex Murphy is host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup and contributes weekly TV essays on diverse topics to CBC TV's The National. (See Rex's TV commentaries). In addition, he writes book reviews, commentaries, and a weekly column, Japes of Wrath, for the Globe & Mail.

Rex Murphy was born near St. John's, Newfoundland, where he graduated from Memorial University. In l968, he went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. His primary interest is in language and English literature, but he also has a strong link with politics. His first book, Points of View, is described on Amazon: "With TV commentator and journalist Rex Murphy, it's easy to put a twist on the old parable: when he is good he is very very good, and when he's angry, he's awesome. Uncommonly dignified, relentlessly honest, unencumbered by de rigueur political correctness, and solidly grounded by his Newfoundland roots, Murphy is that rarest of TV types. He's an everyman who happens to be a Rhodes Scholar, and a personality treasured for his brain, not his looks...A cranky intellect, maybe, but an intellect just the same. It's Murphy's almost reluctant cynicism -- delivered in language as sharp as shattered glass and aimed squarely at those in ivory towers -- that makes Points of View a must-read."

Copyright © 2009 Rex Murphy