So Mitt Romney is taller and, as Zoolander would say, more good-looking than the other guys. The issue is whether this helps his candidacy. Under the circumstances we should think about how other more good-looking candidates fared. Clinton did pretty well, against weak competition. Reagan was fit, but won the Presidency far after he gallivanted topless across the movie posters. Lyndon Johnson was a strapping man, but about as beautiful as a rotting log. Kennedy's good looks were a mask for a crumbling physique. Eisenhower was probably the least manly manly man ever to be elected to the Presidency -- Hunter Thompson kept calling him Grandma -- and before FDR, who cut a dashing figure but probably won four landslide elections for other reasons, we have to go back to Harding, whose position in history suggests that the Darwinian candidate probably wins more often when the voting society cares less about the things that get a people through a major crisis.
And then there's Arnold, who throws a monkeywrench into any sane political analysis. Thank God we don't have to worry about him ever becoming President. Right? Right???
Eisenhower the "least manly man"? One assumes somewhere in that education [and I have a Georgetown degree] you learned that Ike was a top-flight college football player who coached football for years in the Army, was the first president to also be a licensed pilot [learned while in the Phillipines] and used to walk around New York, while president of Columbia, carrying his .45 service revolver. Taking cues from some stupid nonsense Hunter Thompson wrote isn't a sign of learning or insight.
Posted by: Steve | May 21, 2007 at 09:25 PM