Rachel Maddow.(television talk show host)

Byline: Photographed by Alex Majoli. By Robert Sullivan.

Is making her mark on cable news by keeping her cool when everyone else is losing theirs.

Two days after the election, Rachel Maddow is inching through Times Square traffic, relieved to be wrapping up a long week, singing nineties hip-hop tunes and heading downtown for a late dinner, when, for the very first time, she spots the giant Times Square billboard with her face on it. "Wow, there I am," she says. The big after question is obvious: What happens to a liberal commentator when a liberal ticket wins the White House and the Democrats control Congress? "I guess I'm interested in making fun of bad ideas, regardless of who has them," she says. "Obviously you don't want to randomly scour the world for bad ideas. You want to respond to influential bad ideas. So if you end up in a situation where there isn't a loyal opposition, where the Republican Party is in disarray and isn't really surfacing in the discussion, then they won't be the people I'm making fun of. I will be making fun of the Democrats or the supposed experts." In other words, an Obama presidency does not change what you might call her quest. "I'm interested in making fun of bad guys, wherever I find them," she says.

And the TV-watching world is interested in her; her show premiered in September, and quicker than you could say "Nielsen," the 35-year-old Maddow was beating out CNN's Larry King. Her audience share more than doubled, especially among the lucrative 25-to-54 crowd, and just before the election, Brian Williams made some kind remarks about a vote-stealing segment she'd aired. Viewers are enthusiastic about Maddow because they have been longing for a do-it-yourself TV commentator, a talking head who doesn't look like a talking head but is more like an opinionated friend who somehow manages to be tough and honest without sounding like a jerk. "My whole thing is to let Rachel be Rachel," says Bill Wolff, her producer. When she appeared on The Colbert Report earlier that dayin between her Air America show and her MSNBC showthe audience went a little nuts. "Obviously my audience is extremely excited to have you here," Stephen Colbert said. "And I've got to tell you, I generally like it for them to be excited to have me here, so this is already not going well."

Her show this evening is a case in point: the usual Maddow mix of hard-core policy analysis with an ample dose of silliness. During the commercials, what the viewer at home does not see is the host hunched over her keyboard rewriting her script. Her style of political discourse is a break from the shouting, point-counterpoint approach that dominates cable news, instead emphasizing her relentlessly cheerful, conscientiously concise opinions. "I'm trying to get people to agree with me," she says. "I am trying to say, 'Here's how I see the world.' Not everybody's going to agree with me. But I think that I make sense, and I would like you to think that I make sense, too, because I think that we can make sense of this world together, you and me, if"and here she shifts into a fake TV announcer's voice" you'll just follow along! "

Ironically, though born of the election, Maddow seems pleased that it's over. "I am not a candidate person," she says. "I am much more of a news ...