Welcome back! Yes, it's part three of what-really-matters in the Presidential-Horse-Race. If you need to catch up in Part 1 we rated Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, and Mike Gravel (and also explored the criteria for What Really Matters), and in Part 2 we ranked Dennis Kucinich, Tom Vilsack, and "Uncle" Joe Biden.
So sit back, relax, and let Democracy work as we continue our multipart series. This week's installment: we continue with the Democrats, reaching into our heavy hitters bag with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bill Richardson. Details on the flip side!
So to cut to the point I've been a completely deluded fellow and thought The Daily Kos was a great source of information, issues discussion, sharing of campaign tactics, grass-roots organizing, and so forth, but I'm in recovery now, and part of my 12-step program is to Recognize the Magnificence that is the Horse Race. Just because it plays into the hands of an entrenched media, corporate interests, lobbyists, establishment candidates, and oligarchs everywhere doesn't mean obsessiveness with the minutiae of polling, pundits, and pablum isn't the most important thing, ever!
Barack Obama
Hair: Pollsters and pundits everywhere are asking: is America ready for a kinky-haired President? Individually, most people claim they can't see the shape of a candidate's follicles. Yet, to the anonymous pollster, more people are willing to admit they have a bias against curly hair of all types, and kinky hair in particular. The poor showings of previously curly-haired candidates such as Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, and Adlai Stevenson (before he went bald) may simply be historical aberrations. Candidates that have sought to use activator to "cross over" such as Al Sharpton, Carol Mosley-Brain, and James G. "The Hardest Working Man in Politics" Blaine have similarly failed to get a substantial portion of the straight-haired vote while appearing to "sell out" to their base of curly-haired constituents. The big dark horse, of course, is the balding vote, and whether those voters with hair transplants will switch allegiance from the clean-cut Joe Biden. In any event, we cannot give America the full benefit of a doubt here. Obama's clean hairline and ample fillage are somewhat muted by the simple fact he has the shortest hair of any candidate since the top of Joe Lierbman's head threw its ring into the hat. While there is significant promise that this is the breakthrough year for curly hair, we have to mute expectations and give Obama a 3 on the Presidential hair scale.
Height: Obama is tall and it's all him, as he constantly reminds voters everywhere he goes. Because he's also skinny and has to remind voters that he doesn't really mean to be that tall, we have to downgrade his otherwise great Presidential height on the Bill Bradley possibly-freakishly-too-tall meter to a powerful 4.
Spouse-Family: Obama is a heavy hitter when it comes to the family tree. First off, as we've noted elsewhere, America loves to have its Presidental fathers abandoning and distant, the more literally so the better (cf. Bill Clinton.) Living and active in politics is not good (George Bush, Joe Kennedy). Obama's father both abandoned him and his mother and conveniently died before engaging in anything that could potentially stain his candidacy, so he gets top marks here. Obama was also raised both by a single mother questing for her place in the world and in turn his grandparents from the heartland on a farm, so he has many sources from which to draw knowing anecdotes. Obama's stepfather and half-sister were Indonesian, hence he's also able to claim as many different ethnicities as the Mayor of Boston on Evacuation Day. (Heck, he can claim states in five time zones as "home".) His wife is a Regular American and an attorney but not a working one (like you-know-who was) and they have two adorable children who aren't old enough to even try to order drinks at Hooter's or buy mysterious parcels of land in Bolivia. Unless his Mom shows up on Oprah sometime soon, we have to give Obama a 5 in the family-category.
Hotness: Obama is so hot, we're surprised we haven't heard some rumors manufactured by right-wing blogsites about him fathering a string of illegitimate children or being named Gay Hunk of the year. He's young and vibrant so avoids the ick factor of the Bidens and Dodds, but he's not so young that he elicits worries about STDs in the minds of the subliminally-attracted voter. With Dennis Kucinich defining the "1" in the race, we have to give Obama our first 5.
Manliness: As a Senator, Obama gets a point off. As an admitted drug user, he gets a couple (see also Clinton, W., Chester Arthur), especially for admitting it in print and in detail well before even aspiring to the Presidency. America loves a guy who can take a few hits and then says he doesn't need it anymore. As an attorney and a Harvard graduate, though, without military service, and who doesn't drive a big honking SUV, and without being identified with any recreational sports, occasions to use firearms, or history of slapping an opponent down, Obama has to be considered a mushy "3" on the manliness scale.
Dadliness Obama is hampered by his youthful demeanor, which limits the degree to which his Dadliness can be projected to the citizenry. At best, he cannot be so much the Dad you never had as much as he might be the Dad you aspire to be but never will be yourself. As such, in some ways his present actual-Dadliness is a negative because it just makes you feel a lot worse about the Dad you aren't. Obama's speeches indicate he's the kind of Dad who will take you on Church camping trips and to the ballgames but probably won't spend time obsessing over building the national Soap Box Derby race car, preferring to let America build one on its own. The result, of course, will be a crappy, uncompetitive racer that America built itself. leaving America slightly better off as far as character-building but still with a stinking losing car. As Dad-in-Chief, America secretly wants him to sneak in after America has fallen asleep and fix that wobble in the axle. As such, Obama's gentle-love approach can achieve only a 3 on the Presidential Dadliness meter.
PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER RATING: 23
Hilary Clinton
Hair: Clinton's candidacy, of course, has often been compared to Obama's when it comes to the question: is America is ready for a blonde President? For this, we must look at the experience of other world leaders who have also had salon-styled hair. There was the no-nonsense pile of spray, starch, and die that was Lady Thatcher; the Milwaukee-drossed tresses of Golda Meir; the butch no-fuss straightforwardness of Angela Merkel; and of course the flying, powerful, but ultimately tragically-fated locks of Indira Gandhi. None of these other heads of state had to deal with the uniquely American problem of the sandy blonde, in the end, so we cannot draw any conclusions about Senator Clinton's Presidential Hair prospects from this experience. Clinton's notorious experimentation phase with different styles and flirtation with mousse during the Bill Clinton presidency, as well as the Air Force One Presidential Haircut smear, have already raised suspicions with the American public about Hillary's hair. The right wing conspiracy has manufactured even more stories suggesting split ends, bad perms, and even the audacious rumor Clinton had used a weave. There have even been whispers and innuendos that Clinton used a same-sex stylist while in college. While inherently her hair is full of body and unlike most of the other candidates potentially moldable into virtually any hair style, because of the X factor we have to downgrade Clinton's hair to a 2. Someday America will elect a blonde, caressable hairstyle, and maybe Clinton's hair will be that coiffure. We just can't count on it given the negatives.
Height: Clinton is short. Is America ready for the shortest President since Old Kinderbook saw the naton through the Panic of 1837? Is America ready for the shortest President this side of James Madison (who actually wore doll clothing to his first inauguration)? The real question is, of course, does she appear to be short? She seems taller, somehow, by virtue of the fact she's had to walk a mile in her husband's over-sized penny loafers. Because some may instead compare her candidacy to Shirley Chishom's or even the latter career of Eleanor Roosevelt, she will also appear taller than she actually is. Because she can look the vast right win right in the eye and spit, she appears taller than she actually is. Most importantly, because she's the most powerful person to have worn high heels since J. Edgar Hoover, she actually can get away with height-enhancements better than Joe Biden can get away with the hair surgery. More importantly, Amerrica already knows all there is to know about Hillary's height: half of America thinks she's plenty tall enough, and the other half wouldn't be convinuced she's tall enough if she took down LeBron James in a one-on-one to the boards. Because ultimately she's going to have to stand on the podium next to Obama and Vilsack and Richardson, and she won't be standing next to Dennis Kucinich very much, she's going to be limited in this category, but we give her a very respectable 3.
Spouse-Family: Hoo boy. Jeez. Sheesh. My god. Tough one. Where to begin? I don't know. Egads. Gee whillickers. Ahem. OK. Here we go. I'm starting now. Get ready. Drum roll. This is really the beginning, starting right...NOW. First question: is it an asset to have bitch-slapped your husband for his romantic misdeeds? Is it an asset to have stood by the schmo all those years? How about the crooked brother? Well, in a sense all these things are assets, because there isn't a single bit of dirty laundry concievable that hasn't been aired, waved in the breeze, pissed upon by the media, then aired again three more times. Add to this the feeling that having a husband who used to be President couldn't be any worse than a Dad who used to be President, we've got nowhere to go but up. I mean, she did hold the family together, right? She took the high ground, right? We're going to give Clinton a solid 3 on the Spouse-Family on the basis that, barring Chelsea announcing she's bearing Mary Cheney's love-child, there are no surprises and she can claim that she, more than anybody else, has used The Whole Village.
Hotness: For all the blather about Bill's tiptoeing on the primrose path, or at least the Presidential hallway, the really astonishing thing to the editorial board of these pages is the lack of attention paid to the question about why the President stepped out for a ho-ho when he had angel food cake at home? That may be a question that will never be answered even by historians. There can be little doubt that Senator Clinton is one of the hottest, if not the hottest, Presidential candidates in all history. The hints of the same-sex hair stylings in college only add to the allure to the average joe sixpack. Clinton gets some serious blowback (no pun intended), though, from younger demographics of female voters who don't see her as at all likely to have, in an alternate universe, appeared on 'Girls Gone Wild: DC Edition' or have written anything foolish at all about a hook-up on her MySpace page. Because of this holier-than-thou samesex reaction, we have to downgrade the very-hot-in-the-Wonkette-sense Clinton to a 4 on the hotness scale.
Manliness: Here's where Clinton really begins to shine. Insofar as America loves its wandering favorite sons (Clinton, Bush, Kennedy, Millard Fillmore -- did you know that "Fillmore" was a nickname?) it also wants them to come back on the reservation and devote their testosterone to more important things, like invading other countries and spending like there's no tomorrow. By way of addressing for the odd pereception that she is lacking in the manliness category, Clinton has gone overboard in authorizing the unfettered use of America's military might and voting for every anatomically-compensatory weapons system the Pentagon does or does not want in its arsenal. Further, Clinton's never tip-toed around anything: she comes right out with the smackdown, whether it's complaining about the vast right-wing conspiracy, dissing tea-and-cookies mommies for being sissies, or complaining that her spouse just doesn't understand her. Frankly, only a whispered rumor of an affair or a tour in Vietnam could improve her profile more. However, we have to knock off a point for America's ultimate confusion over its own connubial relations, because we know that a Clinton candidacy brings up these issues and there's nothing less manly than thoughtful introspection. For this, Clinton loses a tick and rates a 4 on the Presidential Man-o-meter.
Dadliness Another area for the Clinton Presidency to shine. If you want to ask the question, who wears the pants in the Clinton household, you start out by knowing the answer is most assuredly not Bill. America likes a Dad who calls the shots and is willing to pretend for short periods like America is making its own choices. While Clinton is probably not like the Dad who gave you the keys to a new Porsche for your 16th birthday, she probably is like the Dad who bought you beer for your sixteenth birthday just so you could drink yourself sick and learn your lesson the hard way without being uncool about the whole thing. Clinton is the kind of national Dad who understands America is all strung out on oil and loves to stay up all night with the lights on and forget to study and spent all the money it earned flipping burgers on an iPod, but who is there for America when it finally gets the idea through its thick head that it's really America's fault that it's in all that trouble and not the Iraqi kid it went out on that bad date with or the Russian kid who convinced America to go shoplifting that one time. The secret may be that what America really wants in a Dad is: Mom. Mom with enough guts to stand up to Dad. Sure, half of America will loathe Clinton and get drunk and yell at her at the holidays, but the other half will show up on time and sober, with a side dish, having learned its lesson. For this reason, we're going to go out on a limb and give Clinton a 5 on the Dadliness meter.
PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER RATING: 21
Bill Richardson
Hair: Richardson's candidacy raises the question: is America ready for Latino hair? Is it really possible to define Latino hair, considering all the different hair style the label 'Latino' encompasses? Given that Richardson doesn't even have a Latino name, will most people look at his hair in the first place and identify it as Latino hair? If we just look at the facts of Richardson's hair, we see a mixed record. On the one hand, it's a distinguished and youthful black, and there's plenty of it. On the other hand, there's almost too much of it, and it's combed across in an indifferent part. More than once we've seen Ambassador Richardson's hand go up to put the wayward hair back in place. So Richardson's hair has a distinguished resumé but carries with it questions of how well it has truly performed in the past. Richardson's hair will no doubt appeal to the baby boomer generation and some younger demographics, and yes, to voters who have Latino hair themselves, but until his hair is put to the test of the primary fights, we have to rate it a simple 3.
Height Richardson's of average height, tall enough for a candidate, but unfortunately has a propensity towards a double-chin which draws unfavorable physical comparisons to Horatio Saenz and Rosie O'Donnell. He's from the West and a Governor, so has plenty of opportunities to appear to be tall, but the sense of proportion will hurt his perceived tallness early in the primary race, particularly when standing near Clinton and Obama. Heighthness: 2.
Spouse-Family: Richardson starts out with the appropriate all-American mixed mongrel pedigree America seems to love from its non-Redneck candidates. His mother was Mexican and his father Nicaraguan-New Englander. Like Obama, he went to elementary school abroad as a kid (Mexico) and then prepped (in Massachussetts, just like Kerry, Bush, Kennedy, and three quarters of all US Presidential candidates in the history of the universe.) His wife is perfect: not pretty but acceptable, college educated but none of this Harvard crap, and interested in issues like literacy and child immunizations that utterly no one can disagree with. Even better, she's his high school sweetheart. The potentially fatal missing ingredient: no kids. America is more likely to elect another homosexual (cf. James Buchanan, the Alternate Universe Lincoln) named Hussein than it is a childless President. Of course, maybe America's ready for a homosexual Husseini as President. For the lack of filial campaign photo-op material, we knock a couple of points off Richardson's profile and give him a 2.
Hotness: Richardson's a handsome guy but has had a few too many helpings on the rubber chicken circuit over the years. Of course, the smoldering sex appeal of a Southwesterner might appeal to some voters, but nobody's ever going to wonder what Richardson looks like with his shirt off, like they do about Obama and Senator Clinton, and if America does start to visualize this, it's all over for the Richardsonian candidacy. Rumors of extramarital tippy-toeing don't seem to score any points for Richardson in this category, although he gets credit in the Manliness category that this would even come up (any hot rumors about Dennis Kucinich's alleged infidelities? No? OK, you get the point.) In the land of the chile, Richardson rates only a dos out of cinco.
Manliness: Richardson pledged in college, albeit at Tufts, and was apparently no stranger to the beer bong during his days as a brother. Further, Richardson lied for forty years about being drafted in the Major League baseball draft -- if there's anything more manly in America than having been a pro sports prospect, it's lying about having been a pro sports prospect. As the only major candidate not to have served in the US Senate, Richardson avoids the Sissy factor of that august body. He's also no stranger to cowboy diplomacy, having looked Sadaam Hussein right in the eye and come back with a couple of American hostages (vis a vis Syria, this won Jesse Jackson a few votes in 1988) and hiked his butt over to Darfur while W. was still thinking about who he wanted to serve on the committee he was appointing to ignore the issue. America LOVES loose cannons. While he is tarnished with a stint as UN Ambassador -- we've agreed there's nothing less manly than being in favor of peace (pre-Bolton) -- he did have an unhappy tenure as US Secretary of Energy when the whole Los Alamos spy non-scandal errupted. Any hint of a guy being responsible for nuclear weapons in any capacity automatically enhances his Presidential manliness category. While it's disappointing Richardson never shot at anybody, the very same arm injury that kept him out of the baseball draft also apparently kept him out of the military draft, so he has a better excuse for not having shot at anybody than most of the candidates. While there are some lingering question marks, we give Richardson's tall in the saddle, all-you-can-eat profile a 4 on the man-o-meter.
Dadliness: Is America ready for a Dad in chief who isn't actually a Dad? Richardson's affable nature makes him a far better candidate for Uncle in Chief than first father. Still, Richardson seems like the kind of Uncle who makes Dad look bad: the kind who would let you sip the bottom of his beercup at the ballgame, would let you drive the car in the driveway before you even had your learner's permit, and would explain that math problem your Dad had so much trouble with he yelled at the textbook. In short, the kind of wish-fulfillment figure who just might turn out to be the Dad you always wished you had but never actually had a chance in hell of having. Mom's brother, though, not Dad's. For this, we'll give Richardson a 3 on the Dadliness stick with some promise.
PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDER RATING: 17
Next installment: Wes Clark, Al Gore, Al Sharpton.
Summary to date:
Candidate | Hair | Height | Spouse- Family | Hot- ness | Man- liness | Dad- liness | 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 |
Barack Obama | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 26 |
Hillary Clinton | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 21 |
Bill Richardson | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 16 |