November 18, 2008

Too fit to serve

A trend in campaign coverage of Pres.-elect Obama: Stories about how much time he spends at the gym (always too much), what his White House menus will be like (not batter-dipped enough, too adventurous, too vegetable-inclusive) and, my personal favorite, the transparently jealous, "just saying" bits about how Obama's too thin. That last one being being the campaign coverage equivalent to when another woman compliments your dress, then deflates it in the same breath with a snarky, "What is it, a size two?" Here's a quick sampling:

In a blog post noting Obama's favorite pizza place, Chicago Tribune's Frank James muses, "I'm wondering how much pizza Obama really eats? His thin frame suggests he doesn't eat much pizza, or anything else for that matter" ("The Swamp," 11/14/08).

Harmless aside on a slow news day, perhaps, but what about this implication that thinness and reasonable eating habits are downright un-American?

"Could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?" His "slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them." As his own daughter revealed this summer on "Access Hollywood," the news program of choice for "real" people, he doesn't even like ice cream (Wall Street Journal, 8/1/08).

And from this year's Newsweek Election Project, on the trail with the candidates:

Obama carefully conserved his energy. He was not a man of appetites, like Bill Clinton, who would grab whatever goodie passed by on the tray. Obama was abstemious. Indeed, to the reporters following him, he appeared very nearly anorexic. Most candidates gain the Campaign 10 (or 15). Hillary was struggling with her waistline, as she gamely knocked back shots and beers in working-class bars and gobbled the obligatory sausage sandwiches thrust at her in greasy spoons along the Trail of the White Working-Class Voter. Obama, by contrast, lost weight. He regularly ate the same dinner of salmon, rice and broccoli. At Schoop's Hamburgers, a diner in Portage, Ind., he munched a single french fry and ordered four hamburgers -- to go. At the Copper Dome Restaurant, a pancake house in St. Paul, Minn., he ordered pancakes -- to go. (An AP reporter wondered: who gets pancakes for the road?)


Oh, I think we all know who...

But what to make of all this? It's like we want a president who exercises, but not one who's too good at it, who gets any results. We don't want a president who goes to the gym and actually knows what to do there -- we want a president who schleps into Curves every few weeks and has to be cheered through the motions, struggling valiantly along with us through a routine not taxing enough to burn more than time.

And then, like us, he ultimately retreats, going home to undo it all with various vices while telling himself he's locked in an epic yet unwinnable battle against metabolic determinism, a battle he's noble for merely attempting to fight.

He remains, in perpetuity, some token measure of "fit," with perhaps a skill or two to set a good example. But what's important is that he feels a little bit better about settling for himself, just the way he is.

Instead, we now get a president who's actually, by all outward appearances, disciplined and in control. He's not like us, which is precisely why it still hasn't sunken in that we actually elected him.