Silhouettes of Presidents and Contenders
The NY Times had a deviously clever piece about candidate physiques and their impact on Presidential elections today. Leading with the explanation that they were exploring the claim that Americans might not relate to Obama’s “slender physique”, they did a height and weight analysis of the major candidates, going back to 1896. It would seem that taller or heavier tends to win, though we probably need a baseball stats nut to model the combinations.
The chart is too big to display, but here’s a sample:
It’s a fun little exercise, but the ‘tale of the tape’ seems a little silly for the NYT to devote this kind of space, even virtual, to it. I think the thing of real interest, is the silhouettes they chose to represent the candidates. In addition to some nice design work (Truman’s glasses, William Jennings Bryan’s watch fob, Carter’s smile), they did a nice job of capturing of the general vibe of the candidates. Many have argued that Democrats lose not so much because people disagree with them but because they are hard to relate to, egghead, or as the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas author Thomas Frank put it, ‘inauthentic’. So check out the profiles.
Ike versus beloved egghead Adlai Stevenson: (whose campaigns my mother worked for weekend after weekend):
Nixon versus Humphrey and McGovern:
Dukakis and Mondale are the very mark of unimposing, unleaderly, un-anything:
War hero John Kerry doesn’t stand up to the admittedly faux-Reagan swagger of W:
Not all of them are perfectly accurate. TR’s pose comes off a bit foppish (though he DID lose that election):
Yet another deft bit of info-work by the NYT.
Funny, little known, but TR was the epitome of the fop! So maybe they got it exactly right. Even as a Rough Rider, he had exquisitely tailored fatigues.
Colbert had something about “fancy boy” pictures while trying to figure out which party had the better Roosevelt.
What was a silly waste of space was that Obama-Ayers article. I guess somebody owed Steve Schmidt a favor.
WSJ ran a good article over the summer about presidential candidates and food. They quoted some voters who talked about how they were suspicious of Obama because he didn’t eat enough scrapple, that kind of thing. The funniest bit, though, was a former Kerry aide recalling the time Kerry ordered a smoothie at an Iowa fair, which sparked major panic among his team: “Get that goddamned smoothie out of his hand! Somebody get a fucking corn dog, quick!”
Obama has a funny story about being ‘regular’ in his second book. During a state leg recess, BHO and his Chief of Staff travelled downstate to meet with voters, groups, unions, etc. During lunch at a diner, BHO asked for dijon mustard for his burger. The CoS grabbed the waitress and said ‘any old kind of mustard is fine’. The waitress brought the dijon, winked, said she liked it better too. So many moments of people trying too hard — Poppy Bush and Simpson at the bar talking about drafts and chardonnays, Hillary’s passion for pinochle, Dukakis playing catch in front of his house (and a hundred reporters) to unwind with a Red Sox outfielder . . .