Not ready for prime time: when you act too cool to be president ...

HERE'S what I'd say to Barack Obama if he called me for campaign advice (I'm not holding my breath): If you find yourself, for some reason, at the annual awards show put on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association--otherwise known as the Golden Globes--bear in mind that it's a cash bar.

Wine is served at the tables, of course, but if you want a serious drink you have to head to the back of the auditorium and line up with the rest of Hollywood. One year, I found myself in line with one of the biggest movie stars--maybe the biggest movie star--of the 1970s. That year, though, he was starring in a television show, a comedy. We got to chatting, and as he collected his drink and took a sip, he surveyed the hotel ballroom before us, thronged with famous faces. "You know," he said, a little sadly, pointing over to the moviestar part of the audience, "I used to sit on that side of the ballroom." And then he pointed to the opposite side, to the television crowd. "Now I sit over there." He took a belt from his drink, uttered a single colorful expletive, and moved off.

It's a precarious business, maintaining movie stardom. Make a few wrong moves, appear in a few bad pictures, and you start to slide down the greased ladder until you find yourself on a television show. You're still famous. You're still a star. But the difference between a movie star and a television star is the difference between a croissant and a Croissan' Wich. One is sophisticated and foreign and rich, and a little exotic. The other you can get at a drive-thru.

Barack Obama, who over the past year effortlessly catapulted himself into superstar orbit as the winning, coolly remote leading man in The Barack Obama Story, is slowly and awkwardly adjusting to his Croissan'Wich status. After his pre-victory lap through Europe and the Middle East, Obama has returned home to lackluster poll numbers and lost momentum. His primary-winning act--the big venues, the cheering crowds, the electric rhetoric--was all about distance. He'd appear just above the crowd, just out of reach. While other candidates were gobbling pulled-pork sandwiches and grabbing hands--begging and needy, and as instantly accessible as television stars--Obama glided along like a movie star: untouchable, unflappable, and unreachable. He was all about the big screen; his opponents--especially Hillary Clinton--were small-screen: warty and awkward and up-close. He was a croissant. They were a sack of Croissan'Wiches.

Trouble is, America sort of prefers the everyday accessibility of the Croissan'Wich. We get tired of the fancy and the complicated. There's something exhausting about the entire Obama Experience--the fever pitch of the press corps love-ins, the huge arena speeches--and now that both candidates are getting their unflattering close-ups as the campaign moves into its small-screen phase, the thunder and lightning of the Obama machine seems a little overwrought. The last thing a candidate needs as he makes the inevitable and ...