President as Cool: It helped Clinton, can hurt Obama

As we all know, or at least the cool among us, President Barack Obama was at Anna Wintour's townhouse for dinner.  The other guests, who each paid $30K for the meal, included Calvin Klein and Donna Karan.

Somehow when Bill Clinton was president, this kind of cool was a plus.  Perhaps that's because the economy was purring.  He could do little wrong, including the antics with Monica Lewinsky which most of us grinned about.

But a president who is commander-in-chief of two wars which are not going well, an economy that still isn't out of a steep recession and can't replace millions of lost jobs, and an environmental disaster might not fare well with the image of cool.  Gravitas is more like it, but hold any pessimism.  Perhaps Obama should dig deep into the Administration of FDR to put together the appropriate persona and special events of these times.