A Good Ol' Boy?

CNN is on behind me and I'm hearing the gaggle with the new Obama press secretary, Robert Gibbs. All I can think is the boy has a southern drawl--a little bit like, say, Roy Blount Jr. (the gracious and charming essayist/comedian, not the lizardly politician). Or maybe a brutally toned-down Jeff Foxworthy. Two things I'm wonderin':

• Gibbs seems to have come by his drawl honestly: apparently is an Alabama boy who went to school in North Carolina. I remember his predecessor, Scott McClellan of Austin, Texas, and I don't remember a drawl on him. Okay, maybe the slightest, but hardly enough to notice. Is it something about Texas over Alabama? About the plugged in Keeton clan, of which McClellan is a part? That Austin is not a part of Texas? Or did he train himself out of it, like some Britons practice to talk posh?

• More important, will it help? Blount and Foxworthy are charmers. Is there something about the awshucks good-ol'boy persona that inspires confidence, as in "hey, you can trust me"--? My guess: maybe a little, but not much. Might help him in a pinch, but won't save him over the long pull. Much more helpful, I suspect, might be the fact that he was, as I learn, a soccer goalie.