“People want presidents who lead and relate to them  they don’t want presidents who analyze and seem above it all,” said G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. “Obama still comes across as dispassionate to the point of coolness. He is so comfortable in his own skin, he can be hard to connect with for people who are struggling.”

Discussing the Iraq war earlier in the campaign, Mr. Obama did not need to come across as livid because many voters saw him as right: he was the only top-tier presidential candidate who opposed the war from the start. Now the economy is the issue of the day, and Mr. Obama has largely been delivering Mr. Fix-It speeches and pointed critiques.

“For the candidates, it’s show, not tell,” said Ruth Sherman, a political communications consultant. “Saying you understand is not enough, you have to be able to show it. Obama’s dispassionate approach on the economic crisis fails him on this front because his delivery contradicts his words.”

Whereas former Vice President Al Gore and Senator John Kerry struck populist tones during their presidential bids, Mr. Obama is having none of it. For better or worse, his performance in this time of financial peril goes to the heart of who he is. Mr. Obama may have looked subdued as he arrived at the White House on Thursday for a meeting on the economy, but he also stayed calm and ultimately prevailed at a similarly urgent point in his primary campaign against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose turn toward populism helped her win the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries.

“I think it would be more popular in the short term politically to be more populist on the bailout and Wall Street,” said Gov. Michael F. Easley of North Carolina, a Democrat, “but people know in their gut that a populist approach won’t solve the problem.”