A reporter once informed Cary Grant, the legendary leading man, that a Time Magazine poll found him the man most American men wanted to be. Was Grant surprised?

“No,” he said. “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. I want to be Cary Grant.”

Don Draper is the new Cary Grant

Who doesn’t want to be like Don Draper? Great looking. Smart. Rich. Beautiful women. Good dad.

But there’s something else that makes Don Draper’s character fantastic. It makes him the quintessential American Man of post-war America.

It’s not his looks or his money.

It’s not his awesome suits and beautiful women.

It’s a quality that a lot of us need right now, and it’s lacking–big time.

What makes Draper admirable is his unflappable confidence in life.

“Everything’s going to be okay.”

He says it all the time when others around him fall to pieces.

“It’s going to be okay, Bets,” to Betty.

“Everything’s going to okay,” he tells the kids when Kennedy was assassinated.

“It’ll be alright,” to Peggy.

Even when Betsy told him she wanted a divorce, he called her and calmly told her, “I hope you get everything you ever wanted.”

And he meant it.

Don Draper wasn’t vindictive or hysterical. He wasn’t happy that his family fell apart, but he wasn’t going to let it ruin his life. Or theirs.

“Everything’s going to be ok.”

Yes, Don gets divorced. Yes, Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Price loses Lucky Strike. Yes, many bad things happen to Don, and most of them he brings upon himself.

But his attitude gets him through. And he always comes out all the better.

“How can you possibly know that?”

Betty, on the other hand, doesn’t expect things to be OK. She expects everything to fall apart. And, for her, it always does.

Bobby’s birthday party is a disaster. So is her second marriage. And she gets fat. And her kids don’t like her (for good reason). And Don marries a beautiful young woman who’s a better mother than Betsy.

If only Betsy had taken Don’s advice.

“Everything’s going to be okay.”

The President and the press are playing Betty Francis. They’re telling us that everything’s about to go to hell in a hand-basket because of the sequester Obama invented. And it’s all the Republicans’ fault. And the Tea Party’s.

Don’t listen to them. Listen to Don Draper. 

Better yet, do as Don would do. (Minus the philandering.) Tell yourself and everyone around you, “Everything is going to be OK.”

It will. Nothing’s ever as bad as you think it will be when you think about it.