Barack Obama: the White House's cool operator

Two chairs face each other in the centre of a book-lined room. We are in the bowels of the White House waiting for Barack Obama to give his first British TV interview since taking office.

I had tried to move the chairs closer together. Big mistake: “Sir! Sir! Step away from the chairs, Sir!”

It was a reminder from the Secret Service that Barack Obama, cool and game-changing as he seemed to many in those early days, was still, is still, an American President: a head of state whose life is lived in a bubble of privilege and security and toadying and loneliness. A man who must find a way of being true to his personality, true to himself, in conditions that are, well, unique.

He bounded in and we had the usual few minutes of smalltalk or silence that come before any big interview as the sound engineer checks the levels and the cameraperson alters the lighting. I decided that we must talk. This was too big an opportunity to pass up. And I knew the subject: a few weeks before the interview my son Sam had been struck down, his life altered for ever, by a horrible incurable illness called type one diabetes. By coincidence the President had mentioned this condition in a speech about stem cell research only days before we spoke.

“Mr President, thank you,” I said, “we appreciated you mentioning type one diabetes. My son has just developed it and we are still coming to terms with the change …”

His response was telling. He knew more about this unusual autoimmune condition than I did. He knew the science. He knew the effect it can have on families. But I had spoken to previous White House incumbents and what the President did not do is what they certainly would have — he did not feel my pain, or pretend to. He remained separate. Not aloof — that is too strong a word — but unmoved. Where Clinton would have grasped my hand and Bush would have had us on our knees in prayer, Obama kept his cool.

I liked him for it. Good old George W — actually much misunderestimated as a decent human being in my view — would have been warm to the extent of tearfulness but would not have had the foggiest idea about diabetes. Obama then seemed to me and, way more importantly, to the American people, to be a breath of cool fresh air. His calm, his self-possession — they felt good to a nation tired of being led from the heart.

But now? Insiders have been horrified by the President’s failure to use one of the great tools of the modern Oval Office: the telephone. Presidents phone people to put pressure on them, to flatter them, to cajole and bully and harass and seduce. Obama can’t, apparently, be bothered. He prefers to spend time with his family. Staff members make the calls.

That tells you a great deal about Barack Obama. On the plus side, he loves his wife and kids. It’s not for show. He is a modern father. And he is no more interested in chatting to idiot congressmen than he is in faking concern for the sadness of a passing BBC reporter.

On the minus side ... well, he is too cool to get involved in the great grapple of politics, the hugs, the arm-wrestles, the grip-and-grins. He does not see the point. And that, I think, leads directly to his lacklustre debate performance against Mitt Romney, which so shocked Democrats and reinvigorated Republicans.