Who would I emulate in a crisis?

I've been working on keeping a cooler head about things lately. Something I've noticed about myself in the last five years or so is that I'm sometimes oversensitive and too easy to perceive any potential slight as a more serious attack on me that what it usually is.

Not to sound ridiculous, but this is why I'm so attached to my sports teams, to the novelists I love, my political opinions, and to basically anything else that deserves my loyalty. I don't think I'm going to change this about myself, but I'm trying to be cooler and calmer lately.

It's not that I run around frothing at the mouth--actually those who know me only casually might assume the opposite about me: that I don't show much emotion at all. But while I'm good at hiding my emotions physically, I'm terrible at containing them within myself. When something is bothering me, I lose sleep, I obsess, I seethe.

I don't want to sound too much like a partisan hack here, but the best role model out there for someone like me, who simply needs to calm down and roll with the punches, is Barack Obama. I find it incredible that a politican, and a presidential candidate nonetheless, has been able to inspire me. How long has it been since an American president's demeanor and carriage can be described as laudable and dignified? How long has it been since an American leader behaved like a leader?

The double-edged sword here is that I've become so invested in his candidacy, that the very model of serenity I'm hoping to emulate is the very cause of most of my restlessness lately. The polls are looking good, but this thing is far from over. And I'll be so glad when it's over.

Right now, as a nation in turmoil, we need someone calm, assertive, confident, and capable. For all their disparaging of Obama as a risky choice (now they're just outright calling him a terrorist), Obama is not the risky choice in this campaign. Whatever his ideology, we know this much: the man can take heat. The Clintons threw it at him (Bill still is, indirectly), the right wing's thrown it at him, and now the Barbie Doll from Alaska is throwing it at him.

He's been living in the kitchen for two years, and no matter how hot it gets, he just keeps getting better.