Crowning Mr. America 2012
Wrote this piece during the 2012 presidential debates for The Franklin Sun, wherein I compare the election process to a beauty pageant. I predicted Chris Christie would lose some weight and run for the office in 2016, and if he can bully his party into believing he’s a viable candidate, he may just be on the ticket with Ms. Hillary. Until then, please enjoy.
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Ever since the first televised debate between President Richard Nixon and a fresh-faced Massachusetts senator named John F. Kennedy, the bar for highest seat in the land has been raised to an all new superficial low.
It's not about policy anymore. It's not about political platform. It's about the total package and if the gaunt and statuesque Abraham Lincoln were to throw his top hat in the ring for the position today, he would surely be compared to Ichabod Crain and laughed off the convention hall stage. The press would no doubt launch an investigation into his lifestyle to expose the forces that drive his Goth-professional style.
Given the amount of airtime dedicated to the details, perhaps it's important for the voters to know that former presidential candidates such as Bill Clinton paid $200 for a haircut or that VP hopeful Sarah Palin dressed from a $150,000 wardrobe from Neiman Marcus, but I don't see this as relevant. Just like every candidate since that first televised debate, they knew that part of winning the contest is looking good during the competition.
Based on his deserved reputation as a straight-talker, New Jersey governor Chris Christie would have probably made a more viable candidate than Mitt Romney to represent the Republican Party in the 2012 election. When Christie said it wasn't his "time," he probably meant that there wasn't enough time to lose the kind of weight it would take to compete on television against a much fitter Barack Obama. And that's the big white elephant in the room.
President William Howard Taft would have been destroyed by the infinite loop of late night jokes and satirical Internet videos of a pudgy man wedged in a bathtub. It wasn't necessary for Christie to willingly subject himself to the relentless criticism to know it would befall his rotundas frame. The frenzy started at the mere suggestion that he may become a candidate for the presidency and continued long after his repeated denials that he would seek the party's nomination. At one point it seemed like a desperate attempt by Fox News to give the microphone to anyone other than Mitt Romney. As handsome as he was, Romney seemed to be more of a default choice rather than a first-round draft pick of the GOP or the Conservative media.
In the end, the Ken Dollesque governor from Massachusetts got the party's nod to compete against the fit-as-a-fiddle incumbent, Barack Obama.
As if Romney himself weren't beautiful enough, he selected a running mate who at least half of the voters would rather see shirtless. Like Sarah Palin though, we are learning that Paul Ryan might better serve the party by just standing there and looking pretty. That way, the rest of us may only guess if Sarah Palin knows that Norwegians aren't from the Netherlands or if Paul Ryan is aware that George W. Bush was president when the plant in his hometown closed.
The American public is not just a group of magpies collectively attracted to shiny things that may end up causing their deaths. When those shiny things have the power to implement federal standards on the whole of the people, that's when the ebb of appreciation for their beauty meets the incoming tide of reality. It's Miss Texas having the longest legs and then finding out she can't dance.
Now we're headed for the portion of the competition where two of our American all-stars will debate issues such as the economy, unemployment and healthcare. Pretty faces may have helped them get this far, but ability and skill at avoiding direct questions will win the crown. At this pivotal point, it's the contestant's wit, wordlery and slide-of-tongue nuances that will swing the independent and undecided crowd. This is the interview portion of the pageant and it counts for a lot more to the judges than dimples or a nice smile.
When the curtain goes up, Obama's camp hopes that Romney will take the stage all bronzed-up in a Brook's Brothers cage with a neat pocket square and flag lapel pin to speak unintelligibly about matters he knows nothing of.
Romney's supporters hope Obama will have the same answer he had at the last pageant before he trips on his Manolos and falls off the stage. It's a fierce competition out there under the spotlight—only two contestants remaining for the dream of a million girls.
