Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- In campaigns as in life, traits that are liabilities when you're young can turn into major assets later on.

The chess-club member who flunked gym or the girl who doesn't give a thought to her wardrobe come up winners as adults because of the very qualities that once caused them pain: The clumsy dweeb starts a high-tech company. Plain Jane becomes a federal judge.

Early in his campaign, Barack Obama's most discussed weakness was a detached, even aloof manner depicted as proof of elitism. When Hillary Clinton morphed into a fiery populist downing shots and beers and gobbling the local fare, I urged him to get with the people. Hoist a pint. Have a doughnut, at least. He didn't heed my advice.

As the 2008 campaign closes and the U.S. finds itself battered by an economic storm, Obama's unflappable demeanor has a new name. It's called a presidential temperament.

It's come in handy during the financial crisis, particularly when John McCain ``suspended'' his campaign, jeopardizing their first debate, saying he didn't want to phone in his advice. Then he spent the weekend at his Arlington, Virginia, headquarters phoning members of Congress.

Obama quietly huddled with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and billionaire investor Warren Buffett. He refused to cancel the debate on a Friday night, with markets and Congress closed. McCain showed up.

`That One'

That same temperament prevailed again at this week's debate. Obama was steady, and McCain tried to be. He talked less about being a ``maverick'' (condolences to those at home playing the drinking game) in favor of being ``a cool hand on the tiller'' in rough seas.

Trouble is he acted more like Captain Queeg, stalking the bridge, muttering to himself, and blurting out jokes only he laughed at. He should be grateful for geographic rules that kept the wandering McCain from invading his opponent's space lest there be a repeat of the incident in 2000 when Al Gore sneaked up on George W. Bush. McCain crowded the audience instead, avoiding eye contact with Obama, whom he addressed formally, if at all.

In one exchange, McCain asked if the audience knew who voted for an energy bill stuffed with goodies. Looking away, he huffed ``That one,'' pointing his finger but not himself in Obama's direction. Only ``that one over there'' could have made it more demeaning.

At least he didn't call Obama ``you little jerk,'' as he once half-jokingly did when someone asked at a town hall meeting if he was too old to be president.

Obama Wins

Demeanor is the main reason Obama, by all polls, won the debate. Otherwise, it was Debate One: The Sequel, with many of the same canned speech-bites. Obama isn't wired to land a knockout blow -- maybe he forgets that's why he's there, or he equates rebutting a charge with being angry.

Voters sense that Obama feels their anger, or else he wouldn't be doing so well in Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

But there's an awakening to what the non-elites did for the elites in the name of getting government off our backs. They created more elites, at least by income. There's a huge pay gap. Foreclosures are running at a record pace. Retirement savings have lost $2 trillion in value, while those who got us into this mess are still dining at Le Cirque and weekending in the Hamptons.

Big Bonuses

Listen to Dick Fuld, the head of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., testifying before the House Oversight Committee. After Lehman's slide had begun, Fuld still got $35 million in stock in 2007, part of the $484 million he's collected since 2000.

He told the panel the financial meltdown hurts him as much as it hurts us. Oh, really? Is he offering to give severance to the Lehman secretaries left jobless? Is he going to let any of them who can't make their mortgage payments stay with him at his mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, his oceanfront estate in Florida, his ski chalet in Idaho, or his Manhattan apartment?

The House also heard from American International Group Inc. executives, who collected hefty pay packages while driving the insurer into the ground. Ousted chief Martin Sullivan got a $5 million bonus.

In one of the more egregious examples of wretched excess, executives at an AIG subsidiary, days after the company got an $85 billion infusion of cash from taxpayers, went off to the exclusive St. Regis oceanside resort in California, where packages for pets go for $545 a night and include bottles of Dog Perignon poured into engraved silver bowls. Human accommodations start at $625. It's no wonder the bill ran to $440,000, with $23,000 dropped at the spa alone.

No Whiners

In the whole 90-minute debate, McCain never mentioned his running mate after weeks of sentences consisting of little more than a noun, a verb and ``Sarah.'' After he lost the South Carolina primary eight years ago, McCain called leaders of the religious right ``agents of intolerance'' and apologized for having defended the state's right to fly the Confederate flag. He may already feel guilty about choosing Sarah Palin to step in at a time of such peril.

Voters aren't suddenly engaging in class warfare or becoming a ``nation of whiners'' as McCain's former economic adviser, Phil Gramm, once said.

Quite the opposite. Throw the working class a chance to get a leg up by holding down two jobs, and they're grateful. Give their kids the opportunity to go to community college and they'll thank you for the additional debt.

Yet live and let thrive is ending. Yes, we've not whined about your five houses, but that was as long as you let us have one. Before all this, voters were poised to choose a former Navy man to pilot the boat. Not at the moment.

(Margaret Carlson, author of ``Anyone Can Grow Up: How George Bush and I Made It to the White House'' and former White House correspondent for Time magazine, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Margaret Carlson in Washington at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 9, 2008 00:01 EDT