The short boy who would become the short man can dream of becoming president of the United States.
Good presidential campaign tradition, however, demands the slap in the face about how the contenders stack up vertically. With some variations, the analysis goes something like this: If you’re short, you lose.
Some newspaper stories go beyond presidential elections, quoting studies showing how tall men also fare better in pursuing impressive jobs, promotions, women, woolly mammoths, pelts, fuel for the fire and great parking spaces.
“Something called the Presidential Height Index indicates that since the advent of television, the taller candidate has gotten more votes in every election except one,” the Capitol Hill weekly, The Hill, reported. The exception was the post-Watergate election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, an anomaly in more ways than one. Not only did a 5-foot-9 Carter defeat a 6-foot-2 Gerald R. Ford, but a Democrat won the South.
At least the nation did not do something really alarming like, say, elect a guy with a mustache. Or – perish the thought – a beard. Or even eyeglasses. Or a guy who would belly up to the lectern for a news conference, opening his suit jacket to reveal a gut like Santa Claus.
Whatever else is going on in the zeitgeist, whatever the racial mix on television, however enlightened we seem to be about the handicapped or the overweight, the roster of leading presidential candidates continues to look like a casting call for the adult male lead in “Leave it to Beaver.” Short guys aren’t the only ones dealt out.
At least when the story of Ward, June, Wally and Beaver Cleaver went on the air in 1957, the president was a bald guy.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was the last bald guy to be elected president, and the way things are going we’ll never see that again. Of course, he twice defeated another bald guy, Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson.
This was before television and John F. Kennedy changed the rules. Kennedy had about the same relationship with the camera as Juliette Binoche does, only he had better hair.
Television brings particular things about a politician into focus. Things that might not necessarily bear on the candidate’s ability to lead the Free World. His nose, for one thing. The jowls, for another, or jaw or ears or the relation of all these parts.
Even the most issue-oriented voter can watch Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry discussing trade policy and find it impossible not to think of Herman Munster. Dennis Kucinich? Looks like a very decent guy, but you mostly see him managing a Home Depot.
Besides, Kucinich is listed as 5-feet 7 inches. The last president we had who was that height was John Adams, who was also bald.
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, a top Democratic contender, has been dogged by questions about his physical stature. The New Republic not long ago told how Dean was chatting with reporters on his campaign jet and taking exception to a story in The New York Times that described him as “diminutive.”
Dean evidently found this annoying, not least because, he said, the Times reporter who wrote the story is “about 5-3.” When asked how tall he is, Dean told a group of reporters he’s 5-8, “almost 5-9.” Then he said “5-8 and three-quarters,” explaining that he doesn’t usually get into the whole business about that “three-quarters” because “it sounds like I’m very sensitive about my height. And I’m not.”
Of course. The famous Dean anger probably has nothing to do with any of this. Nothing at all.
Dean fits the 1950s TV look at least as well as anyone in the race, although he might not be quite as telegenic as either Gen. Wesley Clark or U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who could easily do Dockers ads. Dean looks like the sort of nondescript guy who shows up in a short-sleeved dress shirt and polyester necktie to fix the photocopy machine. Maybe he’d slap the darn thing around a little.
Dean is trim, of course, as are all the leading candidates, as is or was just about anyone who has campaigned for or held the office in 90 years. The last fat guy to occupy the White House was William Howard Taft, a 6-footer who left office in 1913 reportedly weighing about 335 pounds. Taft, incidentally, was also the last president with a mustache.
These days, any time a politician or former office holder either shaves or starts losing weight, it’s taken as a signal of big doings to come.
For example, GOP Maryland State Sen. E.J. Pipkin shaved his mustache to enter the 2004 U.S. Senate race against Barbara Mikulski.
“A lot of people believe you are hiding things (behind facial hair),” says Jill Bremer, a corporate image trainer in Oak Park, Ill.
A rather recent notion, evidently, as there was a time when a beard or a mustache seemed a requirement for the presidency. Of the 12 presidents who served between 1861 and 1913, only two were clean-shaven.
Speaking of hiding things, Bremer says she “wouldn’t vote for someone who had a comb-over.”
In this case, Bremer says the trouble would not be a person’s appearing untrustworthy, but seeming hopelessly passe. In the corporate world and in politics, she says, “You need to send every message you can that you’re not out of date.”
Both Bremer and image consultant Joli Andre of San Diego say obesity probably would disqualify a presidential contender because voters would worry too much about that candidate’s physical fitness for the office.
“You want people mindful of their health,” says Andre. “You want people on their game.”
Oddly, a fat president is not considered leadership material for a fat country. What would we do without the all-important TV shots of the president jogging?
True, that image requirement would have left out Franklin D. Roosevelt, who led the country through the Great Depression and World War II while getting around in a wheelchair. Press photographers famously agreed not to portray Roosevelt in the wheelchair.
Since then, the country, if not the office of the presidency, has become more wheelchair accessible. Who knows how a contemporary FDR would play on prime time.
Roosevelt, by the way, stood 6-feet-2. That’s two inches shorter than the tallest president, Abraham Lincoln, who at 6-feet-4 towered over his peers at a time when the average man stood around 5-feet-6. The shortest president, James Madison – co-author of the Federalist Papers and drafter of the Bill of Rights – stood 5-feet-4.
He’d have no chance against George W. Bush, of course, who stands 5-11. The November 2000 election preserved the integrity of the Presidential Height Index, as Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore, who stands 6-1. This formula has Bush beating all the Democrats but Kerry (6-4), U.S. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (6-1) and Edwards (6).
Who would deny that Bush, like his father, makes a fine, tall figure of a president in the dark suit, white shirt and light blue tie? He sure looks the part, whether that involves leading troops into war or heading upstairs to see what might be troubling the Beaver.
Short guys and others need not apply.
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