by Ben Shapiro
Bush painted Kerry as an effete northeastern suit at every opportunity during the 2004 campaign. Kerry handed him the paintbrush.
ON FEBRUARY 7, 2007, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews appeared on Don Imus’s morning show. “I’m so sick of the Southern guys with ranches running this country,” Matthews raged. “I want a guy to run for president who doesn’t have a f - - - ing ranch.”100
Matthews is in the minority. Americans love cowboys, men in boots. We like our leaders tough, but warm. We like our leaders decisive, but deliberate.While suits often raise images of fast-talking city lawyers, boots remind us of pioneers building civilization in the wilderness. Though many liberals believe that the label “cowboy” is an insult, nothing could be further from the truth. Americans love John Wayne.We do not like the lawyer in Jurassic Park.
Suits cannot comprehend the attraction of boots. In 1840, Martin Van Buren’s supporters couldn’t understand the attraction of William Henry Harrison. “In what grave and important discussion are the Whig journals engaged?” they asked. “We speak of the divorce of bank and state; and the Whigs reply with a dissertation on the merits of hard cider.We defend the policy of the Administration; and the Whigs answer ‘log cabin,’ ‘big canoes,’ ‘go it Tip, come it Ty.’ We urge the reelection of Van Buren because of his honesty, sagacity, statesmanship . . . and the Whigs answer that Harrison is a poor man and lives in a log cabin.”101 More than 160 years later, John Kerry mused about George W. Bush, “I can’t believe I’m losing to this idiot.”102
They cannot understand the allure of boots. That is why they lose.
Not all candidates must actually wear boots—but without the ideals that boots embody, candidates may be doomed to defeat. Boots are more than boots; boots are an attitude, an authenticity. Think Claude Rains (the suit) versus Jimmy Stewart (the boots) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.Whom would you vote for?
2
The Long and Short of It
ABRAHAM LINCOLN would have been terrible on television.
His face was quite unattractive; his opponents in the 1860 presidential campaign harped constantly on his homeliness. “A horrid looking wretch he is, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man, a creature ‘fit evidently for petty reason, small stratagems and all sorts of spoils.’
He is a lank-sided Yankee of the uncomeliest visage, and of the dirtiest complexion. Faugh! After him what decent white man would be President?” exclaimed the Charleston Mercury.1One detractor went so far as to state, “Barnum should buy and exhibit him as a zoological curiosity.”2
Lincoln had a poor speaking voice, squeaky and uneven.3 While campaigning for Zachary Taylor in the 1848 election, Lincoln spoke in Massachusetts, where certain papers derided his “awkward gesticulations, the ludicrous management of his voice, and the comical expression of his countenance.”4 At Lincoln’s famous Cooper Union address in February 1860—the most important single speech of his 1860 campaign—his voice was described variously as “thin” and “squeaky,” “pitched most uncomfortably high” with “a frequent tendency to dwindle into a sharp and unpleasant sound.”5
So Lincoln wasn’t exactly John Barrymore.
But Lincoln had one physical characteristic that helped him enormously in both the 1860 and 1864 elections—he was exceedingly tall.6 And height, even in the pre-television era, was an asset.
By his own description, Lincoln was “in height, six-feet-four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes—no other marks, or brands, recollected.”7 By the standards of the time, he was enormous; the average Union soldier stood approximately five-feet-eight-inches.8
Lincoln used his height to his advantage while speaking. According to William Huntzicker, Lincoln would routinely “crouch down and then jump off the ground for emphasis.” He wore a top hat, an affectation that had the double advantage of holding his notes and attracting attention in a crowd.9
His height was an especially strong advantage because of his wilderness background. “The Rail Splitter,” as he became known, was supposed to be strong and rugged—and Lincoln looked the part. Cartoons of the time depict Lincoln as incredibly tall, quite robust, and usually in shirtsleeves.
Lincoln also had the good fortune to run against a particularly short man, Stephen Douglas. Douglas stood all of five-feet-four inches,10 earning him the sobriquet “Little Giant.” His stature also earned him a constant barrage of insults.While running for the presidency in 1856, Douglas garnered the scorn of Senator Thomas Howard Benton of Missouri, who caustically remarked, “His legs are too short. That part of his body, sir, which men wish to kick, is too near the ground.”11
The Republicans made a fortune in political capital by contrasting the gargantuan Lincoln with the “Little Giant.” One election cartoon shows Lincoln and Douglas in a footrace. Douglas is tiny. Lincoln is predictably huge; his legs stretch over Douglas’s entire body. Both candidates are separated from the U.S. Capitol by a Lincolnesque rail fence—a fence Lincoln will clearly be able to hurdle. Douglas, however, will likely plow right into the fence.12
During the 1860 election, Douglas blundered tremendously while campaigning. At the time, active campaigning was considered degrading, and Douglas faced ridicule for engaging in it. So Douglas decided to disguise his New York campaign as a trip to visit his mother.
This was not the smartest political move. Newspapers immediately jumped on Douglas, using his small stature to paint him as a child in search of his mother. One handbill, circulated throughout the country, was entitled “Boy Lost.” It stated,
Left Washington, D.C., some time in July, to go home to his mother, in New York . . . He is about five feet nothing in height, and about the same in diameter the other way. He has a red face, short legs, and a large belly. Answers to the name of “Little Giant.” Talks a great deal, and very loud; always about himself. He has an idea that he is a candidate for the presidency. Had on, when he left, drab pants, a white vest, and blue coat with brass buttons; the tail is very near the ground.13
Another cartoon entitled “Stephen Finding ‘His Mother’ ” depicts a tiny Douglas being bent over the knee of “Mother” Columbia (a symbol of the United States) and paddled for his support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.14
Lincoln emerged victorious in the 1860 election. During the next five years, he proved that his physical stature was representative of his moral stature.
SIZE MATTERS. It has become a well-known political adage that the taller candidate wins the presidency—and the adage has generally held true in the television era. The height factor in the TV era has become known as the “Presidential Height Index.” Richard Nixon in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976, and George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004 are the only shorter candidates to emerge victorious since 1952, giving taller candidates a 71.4 percent winning percentage in that period. So the odds certainly favor the taller candidate, if we take that factor in a vacuum.
And it didn’t start with television. If we go back to 1900, we find that the taller man almost invariably wins. Only William Jennings Bryan in 1900, Alton B. Parker in 1904, and Wendell Willkie in 1940 lost to shorter opponents—and both Parker and Willkie lost to shorter Roosevelt juggernauts. The last shorter-than- average man to win the presidency was William McKinley (five-feet-seven-inches) in 1896 and 1900.15
But height is not always a predictor of victory. In the pre-1900 elections for which height information is available, height seems to matter very little. James Madison stood a mere five-feet-six-inches and served two terms as president, defeating DeWitt Clinton at six-feet-three-inches in the 1812 election; Franklin Pierce stood five-feet-ten-inches and defeated the massive Winfield Scott, six-feet- five-inches, in 1852.
The insignificance of height in the pre-1900 era can largely be attributed to the fact that candidates were rarely seen in public together. The first official presidential debate did
n’t occur until 1960. The fact that Lincoln’s height was such a monumental advantage in 1860 partially reflects the fact that he debated Douglas repeatedly in 1858. By 1860, the contrasting heights had been imprinted on the public imagination.
Nonetheless, height certainly affects how we vote, if only because it shapes our perceptions in general. We tend to think of our leaders as tall; we like them that way. Jewish tradition says that Adam and Moses were uncommonly tall; many illustrations of Jesus depict him as tall and strong. Height denotes strength; physical strength denotes spiritual strength; spiritual strength denotes honesty and decision-making ability. The chain of inference isn’t always accurate, and when we have evidence that shows it to be wrong in specific cases, we ignore the height factor—after all, we changed our minds about Jimmy Carter between 1976 and 1980. Nonetheless, our first instinct is to lean toward the taller man.
Taller men have a wide variety of advantages in fields including business and politics.Taller men make more money.16 Scientists say that taller men are favored by evolutionary biology.17 Why do taller men have such an advantage? Economists Nicola Persico, Andy Postlewaite, and Dan Silverman theorized that taller men are more successful in business and politics because they have higher self-esteem. As Steven E. Landsburg of Slate.com reported, “Tall high-school kids learn to think of themselves as leaders, and that habit of thought persists even when the kids stop growing.”18
Do we favor taller men because they have more self-esteem? Or do taller men have more self-esteem because we favor them? When it comes to presidential politics, the question is irrelevant: in either case, there is little question that taller men have a few inches on the competition.
GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS NOT a particularly amiable man. He cultivated a “majestic, even forbidding, public persona.”19 And it paid off—his countrymen saw him as a godlike figure even while he was alive. Washington’s birthday was celebrated annually as a national holiday, leading one anti-Washington paper to exclaim that Washington’s birthday was treated like “ ‘Political Christmas!’ What is the idea of this expression, but ranking Washington with Jesus Christ?”20
Benjamin Franklin famously toasted the general in quasi-biblical terms. At a dinner at Versailles, after the British minister had toasted George III by comparing him to the sun, and the French minister had toasted Louis XVI by comparing him to the moon, Franklin allegedly toasted Washington thus: “George Washington, Commander of the American Armies, who, like Joshua of old, commanded the sun and the moon to stand still, and they obeyed him.” After Washington’s death, his legend only grew; Abraham Lincoln paid him glowing tribute in 1842 by stating, “To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendour leave it shining on.”21
Washington’s status as a living monument was aided in large part by his astonishing height.Washington repeatedly said during his lifetime that he was six feet tall, but historians estimate that he was at least six-feet-two-inches, and perhaps as much as six-feet-three- and-a-half inches.22 This would make him a full head taller than the average American patriot.23 As Libby Copeland of the Washington Post breathlessly reported, “Despite what he looks like on the dollar bill, it turns out George Washington may have been kind of hot.”24
His contemporaries made much of his height. John Adams bitingly noted that Washington’s political stature largely sprang from his physical stature.Washington, Adams said, was “like the Hebrew sovereign chosen because he was taller by the head than the other Jews.”25 Adams’s wife, Abigail, was quite taken with him when first she met him. “You had prepared me to entertain a favorable impression of him,” Abigail wrote John, “but I thought the one half was not told me.” Benjamin Rush gushed, “There is not a monarch in Europe who would not look like a valet de chambre by his side.”26
Washington’s height became a subject of conversation at a dinner party attended by Washington, Speaker of the House Frederick Muhlenberg, and chubby Pennsylvania congressman Henry Wyn-Koop. At the party,Washington began discussing exactly how people should address the president.
“Well, General Muhlenberg,”Washington remarked, “what do you think of the title of High Mightiness?”
“Why, General,” Muhlenberg answered, “if we were certain that the office would always be held by men as large as yourself or my friend WynKoop, it would be appropriate enough; but if by chance a President as small as my opposite neighbor should be elected, it would be ridiculous.”
Washington, sober as ever, didn’t even crack a smile.27 For our nation’s father, height was hardly ever a laughing matter.
IF HEIGHT WASN’T A LAUGHING MATTER for Washington, it was a downright crying matter for John Adams. Adams had the unfortunate luck of ascending the presidential ladder between the stately Washington and tall, aristocratic Thomas Jefferson. While Washington was a giant in his own time, Adams described himself as resembling a “short, thick Archbishop of Canterbury.”28 By contrast, Jefferson was, by one description, “tall, and with a mild pleasing countenance, but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every exterior grace.”29 One of Jefferson’s slaves, Isaac, said that Jefferson was “a tall, straight-bodied man as ever you see, right square-shouldered. Nary a man in this town (Petersburg) walked so straight as my Old Master. Neat a built man as ever was seen in Vaginny . . . a straight-up man, long face, high nose.”30
Jefferson’s Federalist opponents attacked his Frenchified image, attempting to label him a radical and an atheist—a Jacobin. “Can serious and reflecting men look about them and doubt, that if Jefferson is elected, and the Jacobins get into authority, that those morals which protect our lives from the knife of the assassin—which guard the chastity of our wives and daughters from seduction and violence—defend our property from plunder and devastation, and shield our religion from contempt and profanation, will not be trampled upon and exploded,” queried the pseudonymous “Christian Federalist” in A Short Address to the Voters of Delaware.31
That the Federalists were unsuccessful speaks partially to Jefferson’s physical bearing. Jefferson did not look the part of the Jacobin radical. He was mild-mannered, willowy, aloof. He was no rabble-rouser. He lived on an estate in Virginia and tended to his books. He was more Reagan than Goldwater, more Clinton than McGovern. Any attempt to paint him as Robespierre was doomed to failure.
Republicans were more successful in attacking Adams’s physical stature. They portrayed Adams as arrogant, monarchical, and mentally unstable. Adams, unlike Jefferson, couldn’t shake the unfair depiction, particularly in the wake of the Alien and Sedition Acts. He was overweight and bald, attributes that emphasized his average height. If Adams had looked like Jefferson, he certainly would have been more successful in his bid for reelection.
THE ELECTION OF 1812 RANKS among the most interesting elections in American history. Democratic-Republican incumbent president James Madison had mired the country in an unpopular war with Britain—a war for which America was deeply unprepared. Federalist challenger DeWitt Clinton of New York had the support of many northeastern Democratic-Republicans; as mayor of New York City, Clinton presided over the construction of the Erie Canal.
DeWitt Clinton had another advantage: he was physically imposing. Standing six-feet-three-inches, Clinton was well built and rugged looking, “with brown hair combed back from his face to reveal the high, broad forehead that at the time was held to signify deep intelligence,” according to biographer Evan Cornog. His lofty air and noble appearance led his political opponents to nickname him “Magnus Apollo.”32
Madison was easily the least physically imposing president of all time. Madison was diminutive, standing five-feet-six-inches33 (some historians put him as short as five-feet-two-inches34) and weighing less than one hundred pounds. John Quincy Adams’s wife, Louisa, wrote that Madison was “a very small man in his person, with a very large head.”35 At his inauguration in 1808,Washin
gton Irving described him as “but a withered little apple-John.”36 “I do not like his looks any better than I like his administration,” sniped Daniel Webster.37
If ever a president was ripe for the picking based on his looks and his policies, it was James Madison. If Clinton wanted to run as a critic of the war, he could do so while portraying “Little Jimmy” as a little man bullied into war. If Clinton wanted to run as a proponent of stronger prosecution of the war, he could do so while chiding Madison as a wimp. Unfortunately for Clinton, he wanted it both ways. His coalition was based on northeastern antiwar voters and southern voters who believed Madison was not prosecuting the war against Britain strongly enough. Clinton tailored his message to each group.
Historian Norman K. Risjord wrote, “In trying to appeal to both war hawks and pacifists, Clinton earned the distrust of contemporaries and the scorn of historians. The irony is that he probably would have made a better war President than James Madison.”38 The strategy of running against a war while simultaneously running for more strenuous prosecution of a war has never and will never win a presidential election, no matter how tall the candidate is.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS SUFFERED from the same physical shortcoming as his father: he was short. Standing a mere five-feet-seven-inches, Adams was, according to biographer Mary Hargreaves, “short and somewhat plump, with a high-pitched voice and tearing eyes, he had little physical presence by which to command attention.”39 Adams was bald, overweight, and tended to dress badly. He described himself in his diary as “a man of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding manners: my political adversaries say, a gloomy misanthropist, and my personal enemies, an unsocial savage.”40