I was told recently on these pages that if I didn't like obsessiveness with the "Horse Race" aspects of the 2008 Presidential race (in reference to the Republican race!) I had better go find another web site.
Well, I've seen the light. What we can all spend our time on productively here at TDK isn't issues, fund-raising, strategy, sharing tactics, disseminating news, supporting one another, or analyzing national and world events, it's obviously best spent obsessing about tenths of percentage points in polls, the spin on the spin on media spin on the spin of campaign events, parsing nuances in how candidates say "Thanks for having me" on chat shows, 20-year-old land deals, how hot the candidates' interns are, and so forth.
So as a public service to TDK, I've prepared this analysis of the REALLY IMPORTANT factors in the Presidential Horse Race. More on the flip.
Resumé? Pshaw. Plan for America? Why bother. Effectiveness as a communicator? Fundraising and media consultants determine that, not the candidate.
No, America obviously doesn't bother reading as far as the third panel in Doonesbury, much less respond to substance. So I think it's now time to have our detailed Daily Kos discussion about the really important factors in electing a President.
I've been thinking about the term "Horse Race" and it's true, at the Kentucky Derby they don't spend a lot of time talking about where the horses stand on the issues. They talk about how they look and feel and their breeding stock and that sort of thing.
Here they are: Hair, Height, Spouse-Family, Hotness, Manliness, Dadliness.
Hair (does candidate have Presidential Hair?) More and darker generally is better, but poofiness and hair extending in dimensions not in line with the sides of the head and general vectors of the body are negatives. See also John Kerry (and Mike Dukakis' implied body hair). The era of the distinguished receding hairline or even bold baldness (or bald boldness, I'm not sure which) died with Ike and was buried with George McGovern in '72, losing to the slightly less bald Richard Nixon.
Height (tall = better). Too tall is a downside though if the candidate appears freakish. You want to be able to look Putin in the eye with a slight downward glance, not see the bald spot on top of his head, when you're in international negotiations. Seeing Putin's nose hair is right out, though, if you want to peer inot his soul.
Spouse-Family (ideation of oppositeness and paradoxical unity) The First Lady (or Gent) must be seen as having all the qualities the candidate is otherwise lacking, and be smart and accomplished...but let's face it, not that smart or accomplished, because otherwise they will stick out too much when standing two steps behind and to the left in a sensible but slightly sexy business suit gazing adoringly at the Candidate as if she (or he) hasn't heard the same stump speech in public two hundred times or practiced in front of the bathroom mirror a thousand more times. As for the family, bouncy Stepford children who look great and can help put up the flag for campaign commercials are de rigeur, although having one or two slightly out of whack "personalities" with utterly no political implications can be a useful distraction to actually make the candidate look better (see Billy Carter, the Bush twins.)
Hotness (vs. ickiness) (intangible but may include Body Mass Index) In order to appeal to the opposite sex voter, the candidate must have an aura of Hotness about them and avoid Ickiness when the subliminal imagery of the candidate in bed passes before the voter's mind. That said, the hotness must not be too extreme or the imagery will become conscious and thus the voter will become uncomfortable with the idea and start to eliminate the candidate from contention simply due to the uncomfortableness of the idea of having relations with the President of the United States who Should Be Above All That Sort of Thing even though subconsciously this is what all voters really want. The Ickiness factor may actually also be present in tandem with the Hotness factor (see Gary Hart, Mark Warner) in instances of Innuendoitis. Note that hotness must necessarily also appeal to the latent tendencies of the same-sex voter.
Manliness (vs.wimpitude). In the era of The Decider, I need not explain this one in detail. George Bush the elder may have seemed like a crazy schoolmarm on her fourth double-shot of the day during the '88 campaign, especially when blathering on about Willie Horton and Boston Harbor, but the reasoned intonations of Mike Dukakis pegged him as a girly-man from the getgo. Appearances in armored vehicles or engaged in watersports not involving a very large motor that runs on fossil fuels are a sure-fire sign of an attempt to counter inherent wimpitude. Similarly to Hotness, Manliness must appeal to the latent tendencies of the opposite-sex voter.
Dadliness (vs. crazy brother-in-law-ness): America wants a father figure in the White House. The kindly father who took you camping, taught you about gun safety, increased your allowance in modest increments after you had proven your trustworthiness and good work habits to him, and who dispensed sage tidbits of advice very rarely. The kind of Dad you never actually had. Not the Dad who ranted on about the neighbors' tree dropping leaves into your yard, who alternated between periods of complete indifference and totalitarian disciplinary pronouncements, and who insisted he had come up with the idea for famous inventions before the actual famous inventors. That kind of dad is more like your crazy brother in law, who has crazed notions like weaning America from foreign oil, single-payer health care, paying our bills as we go, and that space aliens control the trilateral commission via chips implanted by the CIA in his Dentist's office. America thinks this is crazy stuff and just wants gruff but distantly loveable vignettes from the Dad-in-Chief before he disappears and leaves us to our own devices again (meaning: Mom.)
So how do our horses rate by these criteria?
First we rate three of the Democrats in the race. More installments in the coming weeks.
Christopher Dodd
Hair: Dodd has distinguished gray hair, thinning but not balding, but it is worn forward in a suspicious manner. What dooms the Dodd candidacy is the dark eyebrows, which don't match and will make voters think he can't make up his mind. Hair rating: 2.
Height: tall enough, but being a Senator takes three inches off how you photograph. Height rating: 3.
Spouse-Family: he has a young wife and two very young children. He is 63 years old. This would normally be a carry-over in the Manliness category but there's a certain ick factor to the family portrait I am uncomfortable in describing (he looks like he's posing with his great-grandchildren, not his children). Props for the vitality-invisibility factor of the spouse. Spouse-Family rating: 3.
Hotness: We know he's not firing blanks, but that extra jowl introduces extra ickiness in the equation when the voter visualizes Connecticut's Junior Senator in the Lincoln Bedroom. Since Bob Dole became a spokesman for Viagra, later-lifed virility will forevermore be as questionable as Mark McGwire's home run record. Hotness rating: 2.
Manliness: Dodd seems welded to his necktie, and doesn't have a single hobby listed on his official campaign website. This suggests he enjoys his job as a Senator, which is not very manly. To ice it off, Dodd proudly served in the Peace Corps, and we know if there's one thing wimpier than being in favor of peace, it's being part of an organized effort to provide social services to other human beings in other countries. Dodd avoids the lowest rating on the Manliness factor, however, by virtue of a short stint in the Army Reserve, so he can presumably trot out a vintage picture of himself with a rifle when occasion warrants. Manliness rating: 2.
Dadliness: Dodd would seem on the surface to be a frontrunner in the Dadliness category, but he speaks in sentences that are far too long and coherent, and he bleeds disturbingly into the nearly-fatal Grandfatherliness field. Dad would never wear a tie on that camping trip, would he? Dadliness score: 2.
Overall Racing Form Score: 14 of 30.
John Edwards
Hair: Edwards' boyish mane has been trimmed slightly from the 2004 campaign, and it no longer bounces around like Dorothy Hamel doing a Flex commercial. This is a good thing, as Presidential hair wants to be respected from a distance, not caressed and smelled. Yet he still has slight puff factors, especially on the side of his part. A few flecks of middle-aged grey would help this contender, as would a quarter inch trimmed off the ears to suggest a vaguely military past. Yet we must continue to believe Edwards' hair is among the leading hairstyles in the Presidential race. Hair rating: 4 of 5.
Height: Edwards exceeds the requisite six feet, but will always be remembered as the shorter of the two Democratic candidates in 2004. Being remembered unfavorably to John Kerry will be a drag on his perceived height. Height rating: 3.
Spouse-Family: Edwards is almost ideally situated, with both adult children who are not yet old enough to be involved in crooked Savings and Loan deals but who seem alright and not crazy like Amy Carter, and a second batch of adorable blond school-aged kids, and as we all know by now, a tragically-dead eldest child. Remarkably both sets of kids are by the same wife. His wife, Elizabeth, is nearly ideal, too: beautiful but not too much, educated and articulate, but she stayed home with the kids, and to top it all off, the survivor of a deadly but not too icky disease. Her major downside is her profession: lawyer. That will conjure up ugly associations with Hilary Clinton. Did you know Edwards' Dad was a millworker? Really, you did? How did you hear that? Spouse-Family rating: 5.
Hotness: A dreamboat like Edwards would normally top the scale on the Hotness index, but as we all know when dating ex-boyfriends or girlfriends the second time around the novelty factor that stimulate hotness wears off. Add to the fact the ickiness factor of cradle-robbing. Edwards still rates a 4 of 5 on the hotness factor, though, in part because he seems like a sensitive new age guy and would do things a modern guy needs to know how to do in the boudoir, but his dead mill worker dad innoculates him from the potentially negative effects of this obvious skill.
Manliness: Edwards runs into a little trouble here. He doesn't pretend to hunt and fish the way John Kerry did, so did not incur the reverse-wimpitude factor, but then again he never shot a naked teenager in the back with an automatic weapon (that we know of). Add to this his frankness with the problem of Elizabeth becoming pregnant again in later life, which resulted in them undergoing fertility treatments. Even though their story is it was Elizabeth's advanced maternal age that was a problem, even the suggestion of a President using a specimen cup as an intermediary in the reproductive process is enough to derail a candidacy. Add to this his nearly fatal concern with the poor and obvious heartfelt emotion temporizing his blind Presidential ambition with the suggestion that he's sincere (sincerity = wimpiness; deciderliness = manliness) and Edwards gets a 2 of 5 on the Presidential Manliness Meter.
Dadliness: this is a split decision for Edwards, as he talks like the Good Dad a lot and you just know he's taken the kids canoeing on the lake he used to canoe on as a kid, but the fact that he looks young enough to be Chris Dodds' grandchild suggests his dadliness will appeal to the under-12 voting bloc, which is notorious for not showing up at the polls on election day because they have to attend sixth grade. 2 of 5 in Dadliness.
Overall score: 20 of 30.
Mike Gravel
Hair: a septuagenarian must still have hair to be considered a viable candidate, and Gravel's doing OK, thinning but relatively complete, but he did not go the Ronald Reagan vitality in a dye jar route and thus looks his age. In fact, he looks a bit like John McCain would if McCain had spent six years in prison. (Oh, right. Ooops.) There's a slight tinge of natural black, though, that gives Gravel a reasonable 3 on the Presidential Hair scale.
Height: Gravel has shrunk with age as we all do, but being from Alaska stands quite tall, so he gets a 3 of 5 in the height category.
Spouse-Family: two grown children and four grandchildren, not yet grown, which is nearly the ideal spread. But his wife has no biography even listed on the campaign website, which makes you wonder how much of a maverick Gravel really is. Add to this his secret shame: he's the son of French-speaking immigrants. 3 of 5 for Spouse-Family.
Hotness: Voters may be distracted briefly by the craggy handsome Senatorial-era Gravel photos, but when they meet the weather-beaten unrepentant modern liberal's 2007 visage, they will immediately think of the shriveling-cold of the Alaskan night. 2 of 5 on the Hotness factor, with only his geriatric vigor providing faint stirrings of voter interest from time to time.
Manliness: At first blush Gravel should rate a 1964 Anchorage-level shake on the manliness meter, since he's from Alaska and we all know that Alaska is the home of the giants of manliness in our country, from Curt Schilling and his bloody tube socks to Senator Ted Stevens and his tubes of internet, all wandering through the snow dressed in nothing more than a pair of mukluks and daubed with sweet and light petroleum from Prudhoe Bay. Add to that resume a stint in the US Army in Counter-intelligence. We all know how manly counter-intelligence is after six years of the Bush administration! But Gravel has skeletons in his closet: not only does he live in suburban Virginia (closer to the White House than Arlington National Cemetery), but he was born in the world capital of wimp, Massachussetts. So the inherent manliness factor is reduced to 3 out of 5.
Dadliness: Gravel starts out with a fair number of Dadliness points since he was talking about energy independence, disengaging from the cesspool of Middle East politics, clean environment, and single-payer health care as long as forty years ago. When Dad has a clean I Told You So Record, it makes up for the inherent fruitiness of caring about such issues. But unfortunately focussing on energy independence, disengaging from the cesspool of Middle East politics, a clean environment, and single-payer health care in 2007 gives you that unmistakeable whiff of Crazy Brother In Law that instantly categorizes you as a visionary and therefore a marginal Presidential contender. Dadliness rating: 2 of 5.
Overall score: 16 of 30.
Next installment: Dennis Kucinich, Tom Vilsack, and Joe Biden.
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