Speaking to donors at a San Diego fund-raiser last month, Barack Obama reassured the crowd that he wouldn’t give in to Republican tactics to throw his candidacy off track. “Listen, I’m skinny but I’m tough,” Sen. Obama said.<\/p>\n
But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them. […]<\/p>\n
“He’s too new … and he needs to put some meat on his bones,” says Diana Koenig, 42, a housewife in Corpus Christi, Texas, who says she voted for Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n
“I won’t vote for any beanpole guy,” another Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Well, sure, I’d like<\/i> universal healthcare, a strong economy, a smarter foreign policy, a cleaner environment, and a more just federal judiciary, but what I’m really<\/i> looking for in a leader is excess body fat. Screw the country’s future, let’s talk BMI numbers.
\n<\/p>\nWhile most voters don’t base their decision on physical appearance alone, a candidate’s height, weight and overall look can play a big role in what Americans perceive as “presidential,” says Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. […]<\/p>\n
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a self-described “recovering foodaholic” who shed 110 pounds from his 5-foot-11 frame in two years and made fitness and nutrition central to his White House run, says voters “probably want someone who takes care of his health … as an example of the kind of personal discipline necessary to do the job.”<\/p>\n
But too much time in the gym can cause problems, as Sen. Obama learned last month after he made three stops to local Chicago gyms in one day, for a total of 188 minutes…. In a memo to reporters explaining the ad, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis wrote, “Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day.” […]<\/p>\n
“It says: ‘He’s just like one of us,”‘ says Arthur English, a political-science professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock who used to see Mr. Clinton stop in for fries and a Big Mac after his three-mile jog.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It’s not just a 1,400-word article about Obama’s weight; it’s a 1,400-word article that suggests Obama’s weight really is important.<\/p>\n
At one point, the WSJ noted, “The Obama campaign declined to comment for this article.”<\/p>\n
Ya don’t say.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s easy to rail against the political media’s fascination with trivia, but the frustration often misses the mark. Some reporting on human-interest stories relating to presidential candidates is normal; news outlets aren’t going to be all-substance, all-the-time. Adding some trivia to the mix can help make coverage of the campaign, for lack of a better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16435\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}