It explains the cringe-worthy moment when Mitt Romney, in white shirt and tie, suddenly belted out the refrain from the Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out?" while posing with a group of black youths during a Martin Luther King Day parade. It explains Hillary Clinton's scheduled appearance on David Letterman's show last night, hours before the Super Tuesday primaries get under way. It explains John McCain's frequent appearances on "The Daily Show," where he matches wits with host Jon Stewart, and it explains those funny, the-heck-with-gravitas campaign commercials Mike Huckabee made with his pal Chuck Norris.
We're talking about the coolness factor.
Now, it may be uncool to even acknowledge there is such a thing. Our high-minded public selves will insist that we base our votes solely on weighty matters of domestic and foreign policy. But the candidates know better.
They know that the coolness factor coexists in the voter's mind along with such other ineffable factors as "likability" and "relatability." They know that a candidate's coolness - or lack thereof - forms part of the composite picture assembled by voters over the course of a campaign. They know that presidents as different as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan are still sometimes described by their admirers as "a cool guy." So they are willing to embarrass themselves if necessary to be seen as unscripted and devil-may-care.
Here's the problem, though. The harder you try, the less cool you are, at least in the eyes of those who are the best arbiters: young people. In interviews, they say that coolness attaches itself to the candidates who seem the most authentically themselves (Barack Obama, McCain, Huckabee) and not to the ones who make you want to avert your eyes when they try to get down (Romney, Clinton). In a political context, coolness seems to consist of a blend of charisma, insouciance, spontaneity, genuineness, and self-confidence, plus a certain indefinable aura projected by the way you dress, the way you speak, the way you carry yourself, and whether or not you tap into the zeitgeist.
And by the ruthless calculus of cool, you either have it or you don't.
"Of the current crop, Barack Obama would probably be the coolest of the candidates," says Elisa Vitalo, 26, of Cambridge, who works for a firm that manages online communities. "Mostly for what he stands for: change all around. Also, the fact that he's African-American implies that America is changing. He's really a reflection of how the country is changing and where our generation is moving to."
Personal style, too, is a key component in the equation. "Just the way he dresses, he's attractive, it's that JFK kind of thing," Vitalo says. "He's young, he's vibrant - those are all things that embody cool in a more general sense."
This is not to say that coolness is any substitute for fully fleshed out issue positions. "In terms of who gets momentum, coolness is a big factor," says Danny Forster, a 30-year-old architect who hosts "Build It Bigger" on the Discovery Channel. "But ultimately I like to think voters are making up their minds on something more substantive."
Of course, pop culture has a lot to say about who gets admitted to the club of cool. Win Butler of the indie rock band Arcade Fire caused a stir recently when he posted withering comments about Hillary Clinton on the band's website and praised Obama, writing: "Barack is the first candidate in my lifetime to strip some of this [expletive] away, and I just hope we don't blow this chance."
Pitchfork Media, an influential rock music website, noted that other rockers supporting Obama include Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes, and a band called the Cool Kids. "If you've got Wilco and the Arcade Fire calling you cool, that's about as cool as you get," says Michael Colton, 32, a Newton native who is a panelist on VH1's "Best Week Ever."
Colton says he would also put McCain in the cool category, contending that the senator's status as a former prisoner of war "has an impact with young people. . . . That makes him cool among everybody." When you combine that with what Colton calls McCain's "no-B.S. aura," the net result, he says, is that "a lot of Democrats would not hate themselves if they voted for McCain."
Julie Halpin, 22, says that while she has no intention of voting for Huckabee, he has captured the imagination of some young people by utilizing Norris in his commercials and campaign appearances. In doing so, Halpin says, Huckabee has capitalized on the fact that Norris, the former star of "Walker, Texas Ranger" who was regularly spoofed on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," is a kind of camp icon to her generation.
"Whoever said, 'You want younger people to look at you, grab Chuck Norris,' was a genius," says Halpin, who is an intern at "The Daily Show" and a native of Plainville. "Chuck Norris might be his greatest asset with people my age."
When it comes to politics, of course, "cool" is a relative term. C-SPAN will never be confused with MTV. And as Massachusetts and 23 other states hold contests today, even the coolest candidates had better hope a majority of voters agree with their stands on the economy, the Iraq war, or health care.
After all, says Colton, "If coolness was the main factor, we'd be voting for the Tom Waits/Kanye West ticket."
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.
