Should he not win the Republican nomination for president, Mike Huckabee could have a bright career as the new face of Subway. The candidate lost 110 pounds and speaks out against American obesity.
Could that be a liability, though? Bruce Reed of Slate magazine suggests Huckabee’s fat fear and need to keep the pounds off could distract him from presidential responsibilities.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times recently razzed President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for their physical obsessions, implying that overzealous workouts steal time from more important things, say, foreign policy.
Reed wrote: “Recent history suggests a direct correlation between how much time presidents spend worrying about keeping fit and how much time they have left to solve the nation’s problems. . . . Bush works out, but his policies don’t. After seven years, he’s in a lot better shape than the country.â€
Posted by Kristin Mehler
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18 Comments
The Prez working out, getting in shape is the easy thing to do when you have your own personal gym with all the latest equipment, the best personal trainer, advice from the best nutrition specialist, Chefs that prepare the best foods for you and the best medical care that can be given right there at your house.No, there is nothing hard about being in shape when everything that you need is available to you on a whim.
“Bush works out, but his policies don’t.”
I think that’s funny.
But it’s not, you know.
I suspect the middle ground is that way to go. I think it’s important for the leader of the world’s most powerful nation to attend to his/her health.
But it’s easy to go overboard on fitness. Heck, if muscling-up became the standard, you might wake up one day and find Arnold Schwarzenegger as the governor of California!
Oh, wait. . .
Well, Clinton didn’t do much to keep off the pounds, but he seemed to find things to distract him from his presidential responsibilties nonetheless.
So I guess they will be installing a Subway in the White House if he wins?
Huckabe could be America’s Next Biggest Loser!
I don’t know why it matters to have a thin president. Here I thought it was all about the job they did.
Man..the mindless hatred has no bounds, does it? Criticize if he does exercise…and the complaints would be loud and long if the president was out of shape.
The mindless hatred is so boring after a while.
I know that Condy works out to deal with her stress. I think that in those huge responsibility positions, NOT having a physical outlet could kill you.Clinton had sex and Bush works out.
I wonder what we would do if we were in their shoes?
I’d probably eat chocolate until I weighed 500 lbs.
” a fat figure is political suicide” A. Hitler, circa 1935
I like to think if I had all the convenience plus all the stress of the office of president I would work off the stress while keeping in shape.
This comes from the person who can still see what she chooses in the mirror and is shocked at how old the photos of me look. hmmmm.
Has anyone figured out how to go to bed fat and wake up thin? I’m willing to give it that much effort!
I admire people who stay in shape. It does take some effort.
It’s so hard to exercise with a busy schedule..but I know that I feel so much better and have more energy when I exercise on a regular basis..the new YMCA on West 21st is great…everything you need to stay in shape for $37 a month..I’ve tried to make it a priority and schedule my work around my exercise, not the other way around, taking care of myself first. It’s the only way I can stick with it.
Bruce Reed’s musings about Huckabee’s weight in SLATE were just that … musings, and desperate musings at that. I doubt that either Reed or Dowd (or anyone for that matter) have done any serious research into presidential weight control efforts or fitness relative to management of foriegn policy challenges. (No research was cited in Ms. Mehler’s editorial, anyway.) We all know that objective reporting was thrown out the window in the United States decades ago, and that we who read the news need to filter what we read against the obvious personal political agendas of journalists. Reed and Dowd have dug pretty deep and desperately to find something to whine about. The fact of the matter is that if Reed couldn’t find anything more substantive than weight control to bash Huckabee with, Huckabee must be pretty clean. That would, it seems to me, make him a pretty good candidate for President. And maybe someday Reed, Dowd and Mehler will devote themselves to substantive journalism rather than wasting time and ink on such blather.
How does having a squeaky clean background make one a good president? It seems to me there is a lot more to being the leader of the free world than that. At the very least the president should be intelligent, pragmatic, diplomatic, strong, moral, and self sacrificing among other attibutes. Just never having screwed up doesn’t make one presidental material.
Bush works out? Could have fooled me because I think he has aged at least 20 years in the last 2!
After 7 yrs. of our ‘lightweight’ president, maybe we do need another overweight president!
Yes, I think we need an overweight president.Roosevelt is overweight who is also a good president too. If so, overweight can be more popular. So does the overweight online dating, such as largeplace.com
Exactly right, Mary. And it seems that Reed, Dowd or Mehler couldn’t find grounds or cause to citicize Huckabee’s character attributes (intelligence, pragmatism, diplomacy, strengths, morals, etc.). So they waste my time demeaning him because he lost weight ????? The voters of this country need to know where our candidates for office stand on the issues that they must deal with in the offices they seek. Why do any of us need to know that a candidate has lost weight? I’m not concerned about the candidates cosmetics. I’m not going to pay much attention to Dowd, Reed or Mehler if all they can say is, “I think we should all vote for the fat guy because he’ll/she’ll pay more attention to politics between meals.” Please don’t waste my time.