Here He Is, Mr. America

In the 1960 Presidential election, a huge factor in Kennedy’s victory over Nixon was the introduction of televised debates. Kennedy was young and beautiful and had a campaign team with the foresight to slap some camera-friendly makeup on him before they went live. Nixon, by comparison, was old and sweaty and sick-looking. He came across as shifty and nervous, even if his answers were right on the money. People who listened to the debate on the radio called it a draw, maybe even a Nixon win, but the TV audience handed it to the calm, dashing JFK without question.

And politics haven’t been the same since.

I couldn’t help but notice, ever since his 2004 DNC address, that Barack Obama has a very JFK-esque quality about him. Both are young and handsome, articulate and inspiring. Obama’s look, his persona, no doubt helped him win election. Looking back at all the races since 1960, the better looking man has been the victor (maybe with the exception of Jimmy Carter). And as someone who wants to run for President someday, this concerns me.

I do not want our electoral process to be manipulated by the same superficial judgments as a Hollywood movie casting. I’m not saying Obama won only because of good looks, but I would conjecture that it played a huge role. I can’t imagine a man with the same platform and same past winning if he had had a pizza face and a squeak toy voice. And so much of what I heard against John McCain was about his age, his swollen jaw, his stiff arms. I witnessed two guys on election night being so tasteless as to mock McCain’s waving style, laughing as they feigned shoulder paralysis. I turned to them and, unable to filter the disgust out of my voice, asked, “do you know why his arms are like that?” They sheepishly told me they did and stopped the joke.

For a man to be mocked over his battle wounds, ones he earned as a POW fighting for our freedom and being tortured daily, goes to show just how shallow we, as voters, have become. It doesn’t matter why a man is disfigured, the bottom line is that he’s ugly and won’t win. On TV, McCain looked like a senile weakling next to the regal Obama. How much did the answers matter? Would the meat of each argument have tasted different if it had some on a prettier plate?

More important than looking back on the “what if” is looking forward to how this obsession with the visual is going to doom us in the future.

I can’t count how many beautiful people are talentless and famous. But in Hollywood, bad acting from a pretty face does no damage other that a waste of an $8 movie ticket. In the White House, bad leadership from a pretty face causes the downfall of the most powerful country in the world.

Will we ever again be willing to elect a Roosevelt, who rode to his inauguration in a wheelchair? Would we be willing to vote for a William Howard Taft, an overweight man with an incredible mind and gift for diplomacy? People criticized Sarah Palin for her beauty contest history, unaware that every Presidential election in the last 50 years has been a pageant. And if you flipped through People magazine, you’d have seen that this time around Barack even competed in the swimsuit round.

I’ve been talking lately about getting back to the roots of conservatism, but that’s for my party. For my country, all of us together, I propose that we get back to electoral politics as an intellectual process rather than a hit new reality show: White House’s Next Top Model.

But if we continue to vote with superficial reasoning, I say Palin/Romney in 2012, because in the Republican Party, we’ve got people with beauty AND brains.