In a Heated Race, Obama's Cool Won the Day

During the campaign, pundits ventured that Obama had to navigate around the stereotype of the Angry Black Man. But Obama may have single-handedly vanquished that stale stereotype forever.

And so it was temperament that came to the fore rather than race. For most of the past year, any discussion of presidential temperament tended to center on McCain and his reputation for flying into profane rages. Obama himself dropped the T-word on McCain during Obama's acceptance speech in late August at the Democratic National Convention: "If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have."

Webster's New World College Dictionary defines "temperament" as "one's customary frame of mind or natural disposition."

"Temperament" can be easily tweaked to be a pejorative: "temperamental" means excitable and erratic.

Obama never appears temperamental. But the cool demeanor hasn't always been an asset. Back in the primary season he sometimes could seem too aloof, too professorial, too cerebral (remember that in politics, words like "professorial" and "cerebral" are supposed to make us leap back in horror).

Obama could even be dull. Go back to the spring of 2007, when it seemed like everyone in the U.S. Senate was running for president. The international firefighters union had a big gig in Washington, a cattle call for presidential candidates. Obama said all his usual, earnest stuff, and pretty much bombed. Obama was "flat," the press corps decided.

This is something that rarely got mentioned in the sanctioned narrative of the Obama campaign: He had some off nights. He didn't have a supernatural ability to dazzle an audience. His greatest speeches were usually synergistic, with his supporters creating the atmosphere where his words could sparkle. If Obama made the crowds, the crowds also made Obama.

There's one chronic problem with being so self-controlled, and that is that it can make a person hard to read. The audience can hunger for more emotion, more signs of the human inside the suit. Obama has, in fact, been extremely revealing of his thoughts and emotions in his memoirs, particularly his first, "Dreams From My Father," but as a presidential candidate he's stuck to his unrevealing script.

Journalists have been frustrated. From the campaign plane they complained that he's hard to get to know. On election eve, John Dickerson wrote in Slate: "It's hard to guess at a candidate's inner feelings. It is particularly hard with Obama, whose emotions are as carefully constrained as a bonsai tree and who keeps the press at a chilly distance."

But Obama didn't need to make journalists love him. He needed to make swing voters comfortable with him. Consider two commercials, one for McCain, one for Obama, that got heavy rotation in Pennsylvania and Virginia in the final days of the campaign.

The first, produced by a group called the National Republican Trust, showed the Rev. Jeremiah Wright fulminating. "For 20 years, Barack Obama followed a preacher of hate," the ad said. It concluded: "Barack Obama. Too Radical. Too Risky."

When that ad aired during "Monday Night Football," it was immediately followed by an ad for Obama. The candidate stared into the camera and said, "John McCain wants to scare you. I want you to know what I believe. I believe in the dignity of work. I believe in tax cuts for the middle class. I believe people who break the law should be punished, and the terrorists who fought against us should be hunted down before they strike."