Invoking the curve: In Search of America’s Coolest Politician.

The other day a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go to a “club” with him. When I seemed less than thrilled, he said, as if to sweeten the pot, “come on, man… we’ll get bottle service.” Nice try, pal. And I thought this guy was my friend. As far as I’m concerned, being behind a little red rope with a bunch of douche bags wearing collared shirts with embroidered skulls, bootleg cut jeans and pointy leather shoes, trying to get girls who seem patently disinterested, to drink from a bottle of chilled Grey Goose, is about as cool as Karl Rove rapping.

But it got me seriously thinking about people’s perception of cool. As is often the case, I started thinking about cool as it applies to politics. Before long I was racking my brain for the answer to a complex question: who is the baddest man or woman in public service?

Both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have been compared to John F. Kennedy, but I don’t really see it. Most of the time politicians get graded on a curve when it comes to coolness. It’s similar to how athletes are considered really hot if they are at all attractive. See Danica Patrick, Maria Sharapova, Derek Jeter. Much like Anna Kournikova or Tom Brady in the looks department, Jack Kennedy was cool by any standard. For Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as much as I love them, the curve must be invoked

I know President Obama is fairly good looking, calm and collected, intellectual and athletic. Actually, I don’t know if he is truly athletic. Does anyone else wonder why he never plays basketball in shorts? But I digress.

Bill Clinton received favorable publicity because he was young and played the saxophone. But is that really cool? Youth isn’t expressly cool. Think Tucker Carlson or Miley Cyrus. And playing the saxophone makes you sick if you’re John Coltrane, not if you are a kid in the school band, or a politician on the world’s most annoying talk show (even as a wee lad, I knew Arsenio Hall was whack).

There are a lot of elected officials, almost all Democrats, doing really great things to change the way we live. But that’s Einstein cool, I’m talking about Frank Sinatra cool.

And please spare us the tired adages about how it doesn’t matter if a politician is cool so long as he is an effective legislator. That’s a given. In 2004, when there was endless chatter about how Americans would prefer to drink a beer with George W. Bush rather than John Kerry, a friend of mine angrily said “I don’t care about having a beer with my president. I just want him to run the country.” I agree with his point, but what if it wasn’t one or the other?

So in the spirit of Mad Men and the guy from the Dos Equis commercials, I want to know who the coolest American public servant is.

I’m not just talking about presidents either. In fact, since there is only one president, and he probably would garner most everyone’s vote, let’s leave him out of it. What about Senators, Representatives, Governors, Mayors, City Councilmen, even Delegates. What do you got?

Please don’t confuse playboy or jet setter for cool, either.

I mean someone who dresses like Don Draper, is as comfortable in their own skin as George Clooney and has the intellectual Breadth to get in the weeds of foreign policy with Hillary Clinton (so maybe Frank Sinatra was a poor example).

I’m sure the next few days will be heavily dominated by election talk, as it should be. I will certainly be weighing in .However, after you’ve read 1000 different yet extremely similar reasons why Deeds lost and Hoffman won, how the tea baggers are cannibalizing the Republican Party and the Democrats are doomed in 2010, take a moment to think about my question.

I am going to do a little research, weigh people’s responses and come back with a winner.

Go well, Brothers