I've been told on The Daily Kos that if I want to see more about issues, I should go to another site, because the 'horse race' is going to be oh so very important.
Silly me, I thought TDK was all about tactics, strategy, issues, character, alternative journalism, information-sharing, and the politics of the grassroots. I had thought the whole point of this exercise was to get away from the poisonous inside-baseball, poll-obsessed, hair-splitting, minutiae-obsessed, media-skewed, money-clogged approach to selecting the most important leader in our democracy.
Well, I saw the light, and starting with Part 1 of this series, I've been outlining the 2008 Presidential contenders by what really counts. In this installment, we look at three more Democrats: Dennis Kucinich, Tom Vilsack, and Joe Biden. More on the flip side.
For a full discussion of the really important factors in the 2008 Horse Race, see Part 1 of this series. As a brief reminder, the critical factors for selecting a Presidential nominee are: Hair, Height, Spouse-Family, Hotness, Manliness, and Dadliness. (For a discussion of Dadliness vs. Godliness, please see this comment thread.)
Dennis Kucinich
Hair: Kucinich's hair is among the least fit for holding the highest office in the land that hair can hold. It is a strange mix of seventies-nostalgia poof and high side part, with an uncertain wave in the middle. It is still jet black, but given Kucinich's perpetual youthfulness and history as "the kid", having one's natural hair color without any distinguishing flecks of gray at the temples is a negative. Depending on the lighting, it alternately looks like a helmet pasted on top of a bald wig or Hitler's hair magically resurrected by some crazed scientist at work in a secret lab in Brazil. It is not hair that says "let me put my follicles on the nuclear button." Short of Alan Dershowitz' hair entering the race, this is about as low as it gets. Hair rating: 1.
Height: Kucinich is only four foot six inches tall. He's as short as it is possible to get without being in a wheel chair and getting the positive bounce of an FDR or a post-stroke Woodrow Wilson. He makes Mike Dukakis look like Shaquille O'Neal. Kucinich is the main reason the candidates sit for most of their debates - the other candidates don't want to look at the top of his hair for two hours on cold New Hampshire nights. Height rating: 1.
Spouse-Family: Kucinich is a two-time loser on his third wife, and actually seems to have advertised for a wife on the campaign trail during 2004. He's of Croatian and Irish ancestry, notably stable parts of the world in the past few decades in the popular imagination. His current wife is a foreigner -- a Brit -- while we haven't heard any rumors of a mail-order match between the two, we're perfectly willing to speculate completely baselessly. He has way too many brothers and sisters not to produce at least one hybrid of Amy Carter and Roger Clinton among them or his nieces and nephews. Spouse-Family rating: 1.
Hotness: While the boyish appearance, two-time loser status, meat helmet hair, short stature, and rustbelt home address might seem to make Kucinich about as appealing in this category as nine-week-old celery dropped into boiling water, it must be remembered that back in his bachelor days of 2004 there was strangely enough a small buzz concerning his eligible status and a bit of a contest to see who could win a date with Kucinich. The fact that he's had three wives proves he has appealed at some level to at least three women in his lifetime, leading one to wonder at the mystery of his allure. That mystery alone is worth a bonus point in this category, bringing Kucinich up to a 2 on the Hotness meter.
Manliness: Kucinich has proposed a US Department of Peace, and as noted here previously (see Christopher Dodd) there's nothing wimpier than peace when it comes to wagging a finger at the American people. Kucinich is also a Vegan. That's right, he's too chicken to eat chicken, and has a beef with beef. This makes it very hard to compete on the rubber chicken circuit unless the chicken is actually made out of rubber, and we are not even sure whether or not Kucinich has a latex allergy. He's also against the death penalty, and the words "coddling" and "mercy" can't be far behind. As Presidential material goes, it's hard to get bean sproutier and more birkenstockly than Dennis Kucinich. Manliness rating: 1.
Dadliness: Kucinich suffers from the worst of both worlds in the Dadliness category. He certainly does not elicit wishful memories of the Bad Dad, cussing at us to go get a job like a baleful Ronald Reagan or even Bob Dole, nor does he engender the kind of national self-loathing of the Jimmy Carter-like dad, hectoring you about your wasteful habits and how you spend yoru weekends. Nor does he have the easy-going permissiveness of the Bill Clinton Presidency - you just know that Kucinich would never let you have a BB gun, much less put up a poster of Farah Fawcett on your wall, and that lectures on gun safety and the objectification of women would soon follow. If there was a way to give Kucinich a zero, we'd do it. Dadliness: 1.
Summary: Kucinich rates a 7 on the Horse Race Meter, which would be great if it were out of 10 instead of out of 30. Plus side: his negatives are so high he can do any whacko thing he wants to in the campaign and not suffer, such as proposing national health care, higher taxes on the wealthy, protecting social security as a government program, and other similarly bizarre proposals.
PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER RATING: 7.
Tom Vilsack
Hair: Holy cow! Vilsack's hair looks like Kucinich's after the grease has been taken out and it's been blow-dried! Actually, the older and either re-touched or selectively-enhanced photos of Vilsack on his official site seem to date to his gubernatorial days, and the current Vilsack 'do is showing enough gray and poof control that his hair has to be considered a serious contender with upward potential. It has the suggestion of gravitas even if it needs a little gel to keep it in place. While not entirely Presidential, neither is it distracting, earning The Coif Vilsack a solid 3.
Height: Vilsack's big enough to look John Kerry in the lower eyelid, and photographs tall enough to seem to be just slightly taller than most of the people who come supplicating to him. This would normally rank him fairly well in Presidential height, but he has a bit of an extra chin thing going on and has a big open face. Contrast this to, say, John Kerry's frankified skeletal qualities and deep facial shadowing, which make him look like some kind of skinny space alien peering down at a potential snack/victim/mate. Vilsack certainly meets the minimum requisite altitude to become Commander in Chief, but since he's still wearing a regular sport coat he'll have to be content with a 3 on the altimeter.
Spouse-Family: Uh-oh. We see the derailing of Vilsack's Presidential candidacy coming a mile away, more like late October if he's the Democratic nominee. Vilsack, you see, is an orphan. That's his story, at least, but in 1951, when Vilsack was born, "orphans" were usually the product of the union between a wild teenage mother who smoked cigarettes and listened to race records and some zoot-suited sailor on leave with a sob story about Korea even though he was actually stationed at a supply shack in Pensacola. America loves its Presidents to have distant or absent fathers, your Gerald Ford (ne Leslie King) and Bill Clinton (ne Bill Blythe the third) who had the double-shot of being born both after his father's death and having an abusive stepfather and a hard-working single mother after the two dads, or at least smotheringly controlling fathers (Joe Kennedy, Poppy Bush, et alia) to explain the son. What America doesn't fancy is the idea of the Presidential Birth Mother appearing out of the blue during some mano a mano showdown with the Chinese, or some strange collection of ethnic background and disturbed relatives we don't know about. For all we know, Vilsack is Osama bin Laden's half-brother. You can't disprove it, can you? So the great wife and the two adult sons are, for all we know, a smokescreen for a ghastly fifth column. (Besides, both sons are studying to be lawyers.) Vilsack's loving adopted family and hard-working Pittsburgh roots can't match a wholly imagined and insinuated secret genetic past. Family-spouse rating: 2.
Hotness: Vilsack was born in Pittsburgh and raised in Iowa. Nothing says "sexy" like coming from the rustbelt and setting down your roots in a corn field, unless it's dressing up in a three-piece business suit and sitting quietly in a middle pew during church in the middle of a snowstorm. America thinks it loves the heartland, but why does it never elect a President from the middle of the country? Because America secretly likes the bad boys, and it's hard to be given the Eye by somebody who is so passionate about ethanol policy. Hotness rating: 2.
Manliness: Here's where being an orphan is a plus: you at least have the hint of a Dickensian thug in your background. At least, as much of a chance of being an Artful Dodger as an Oliver. On the one hand, Vilsack's Pittsburgh roots aren't really the stuff of tough: his Dad was an insurance salesman and he "prepped" instead of going to either city schools (criminal tendencies, boys bathrooms) or Catholic school (mean nuns). On the other hand, once he got to his even preppier college, Hamilton, he at least pledged DU, one of the most badass, lacross-loving, alcohol-poisoning brotherhoods in the game. He skipped Vietnam, though, for law school, and he was on the short list for John Kerry as a running mate, and it's hard to shake a stigma like that off. Manliness meter: 2.
Dadliness: Vilsack comes across as quiet and reasoned, with detailed positions on the issues and a quiet ackknowledgement of his long-shot status. This reality-based approach is a far cry from the I'm-Always-Right attitude America wants from its Dad-in-Chief. Judging from his "Daily Show" appearance he fits more into the dumb-joke Dad who brought out baby pictures of you to show your prom date but then didn't have a follow-up to the joke he had memorized. When he finally gets wound up, he sounds like he's been rehearsing his oh-so-serious lecture about the birds and the bees for the previous four weeks. Dadliness: 2.
PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER RATING: 14.
Joe Biden
Hair: Joe Biden's Presidential hair story is one of tragedy and triumph. After suffering from continual thinning over the years, Biden started resorting to a combover that made Strom Thurmond's hair look like Don King's. His credibility hampered in 1988 by accusations of plagiarism, the combover simply screamed "I'm a dishonest shyster who doesn't know if his hair is coming or going!" Biden's silent response to this was reform: he got some hair plugs and some expensive hair surgery. While the mildly-receding, distinguished grey pate that has resulted might appear to be promising Presidential cordage, the lie that is behind it will surely surface during the ardors of a campaign. Because it looks good to the ignorant masses who do not know the full story of Biden's false head, he rates a 2 -- barely.
Height: One of the strengths of a Biden candidacy: Biden is both tall and walks like he has a broomstick extended from every orifice, making him seem even taller than he actually is. It's the ability to project the appearance of height that really makes a candidate -- witness, again, the contrast to the even-taller John Kerry, who looks as if he's suspended from guy wires to achieve the effect. Biden has a purposeful stride and a great way of sitting in the Senate when he's in the middle of a completely non-sensical sesquipedalian soliloquoy, and it's that ramrod posture that almost makes his babbling make sense. Height rating: 4 (the bald head protruding on the top keeps Biden from achieving a 5 in height.)
Spouse-Family: Biden gets serious plusses here by out-sobbing the John Edwards sob story. Biden's first wife, instead of threatening to die from a horrible illness (Elizabeth Edwards, the first Mrs. Gingrich), actually died in a car wreck in which his infant daughter also died. Biden raised his two sons alone, and then remarried and had more children, giving him a nice spread of attractive offspring and grandchildren. He can claim to have been a single father without the ugliness of a divorce intervening. Hiw wife, Jill, is active and concerned (founding a Breast Cancer Awareness program) without being seen as too accomplished (Hillaryitis, Teresa Heinzmania, etc.) and is a former teacher so he can yammer on about education. In fact, the only possible negative here is that Biden's wife appears to be much more intelligent than he is, and while that may have been the case for most of our Presidents, America likes a first lady who can hide that fact (Laura Bush). Spouse-Family: 5, at least until one of his kids gets mixed up in a savings and loan scandal.
Hotness: Biden's former single-dad status and tragic widowerhood gives him a modest head start for those voters who have a thing about stable middle-aged family men who need to get out, but having married again and settled into the grandfatherly schtick mutes the effect somewhat. Throw in Biden's amazing mouth and thirty-four-year Senate career (hard to believe, but true) and you have the makings of a boring, boring date. How is America going to imagine what Biden is like in bed if they can't make it through the appetizers without wondering when it's going to be able to get home to watch a 'Sex in the City' repeat? Hotness: 2.
Manliness: Biden's bluster and off-the-cuff ranting give him a little bit of a bump in manliness, but end up contributing more to the Dadliness category when all is said and done. The single-father-commuting-home story will give him some perceived props in the opposite-sex-manliness-consideration area. And Biden has certainly been one to authorize a war first and pretend to ask questions later, characteristics America seems to love. But there's a Kerryesque whiff to his equivocation about his record, and as we've said before, there's nothing more sissy than being a serving Senator. Biden is another guy who skipped Vietnam for law school. Don't you think W. could've gotten into law school instead of joining the Texas Air National Guard so he could pick up girls who wanted to be married to a pilot, because he could've, but he chose to take the other path. Manliness: 2.
Dadliness: This is the other category where Biden gets a serious lift to his Presidential prospects. Biden's loud dithering in the Senate and in debate forums (dating back to 1988) is from the Dad we know when he caught us stealing beer out of the fridge to take to a party in 10th grade. It has an overbearing, out of proportion, self-absorbed, and ultimately digressive tone to it that America loves from its Dad in chief. Biden is the kind of father figure who would, after all, take you camping and hunting, but would do so only so that he could say he had done it so he could have the high ground later on when he was lecturing you about stealing the beer. As such, he lacks the kind of Reaganesque ability to slightly convince America that it really was at fault for the deed, not for merely getting caught, and his Dadliness, while promising, ends up rating only a 3.
PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER RATING: 18.
Summary to date:
Candidate | Hair | Height | Spouse- Family | Hotness | Manliness | Dadliness | TOTAL |
Christopher Dodd | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 14 |
John Edwards | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 20 |
Mike Gravel | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 16 |
Dennis Kucinich | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
Tom Vilsack | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 14 |
Joe Biden | 2 | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 18 |
Next installment: Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Bill Richardson.