Too Fit to Be President?
Facing an Overweight Electorate,
Barack Obama Might Find
Low Body Fat a Drawback
By AMY CHOZICKAugust 1, 2008
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.
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.
The candidate has been criticized by opponents for appearing elitist or out of touch with average Americans. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in July shows Sen. Obama still lags behind Republican John McCain among white men and suburban women who say they can't relate to his background or perceived values.
"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.
"I won't vote for any beanpole guy," another Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board.
The last overweight president to be elected was 335-pound William Howard Taft in 1908. As for tall and lanky presidents, "you might have to go back to Abraham Lincoln" in 1860, says presidential historian Stephen Hess. "Most presidents were sort of in the middle."
According to Sen. Obama's Chicago physician David Scheiner, the senator works out regularly, jogs up to three miles a day when he can, and has "no excess body fat."
Dr. Scheiner didn't disclose his patient's exact weight, but medical observers estimate that the 6-foot-1.5-inch-tall senator appears to weigh at least 10 pounds less than the roughly 190 pounds that the average American man of his height weighs. The Obama campaign declined to comment for this article.
Though Sen. McCain cannot lift weights due to injuries he suffered as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he "walked the Grand Canyon rim to rim in August 2006" and hikes whenever he can find the time, according to John D. Eckstein, an internist in Scottsdale, Ariz., who treats Sen. McCain. At roughly 165 pounds, his weight is slightly above average for a 5-foot-7-inch man his age, according to nutritionists.
While 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.
Throw in the calories involved in a modern-day presidential campaign -- often compared to a beauty pageant and a competitive eating contest rolled into one -- and presidential candidates have an added challenge.
"It's very difficult to eat well when you're constantly on the road, attending dinners, lunches, barbecues," says New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. He says he grew a beard when he withdrew his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in January "to hide one of my chins."
Sen. Obama, 46, wasn't always svelte, and friends and family members have described him as a "chubby" child growing up in Indonesia and Hawaii.
Raised by a Midwestern grandmother, Sen. Obama didn't begin to slim down until he played basketball regularly in high school.
These days he stays away from junk food and instead snacks on MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea, a healthy organic brew. (Sen. McCain is said to have a weakness for Butterfinger candy bars, jelly beans, and coffee and doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts.)
On a campaign stop in May at Lew's Dari-Freeze in Milwaukie, Ore., Sen. Obama's wife, Michelle, and their two daughters ate ice-cream sundaes and onion rings, while Sen. Obama grinned for the cameras and swirled a spoon around in his quickly melting ice-cream concoction, taking only a few nibbles.
During a July family appearance on "Access Hollywood," Sen. Obama's 7-year-old daughter, Sasha, revealed that her dad doesn't like ice cream or sweets. "Everybody should like ice cream," she said.
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."
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. The marathon workout session sparked a widely circulated Associated Press article titled "Obama Becomes a Gym Rat." In it, the reporter wrote, "Sometimes it's hard to tell if Barack Obama is running for president of the United States or Mr. Universe."
Republicans have recently picked up on the senator's fitness regimen. On Wednesday, the McCain campaign launched a new ad titled "Celeb" that compares Sen. Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. 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."
Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass says likening Sen. Obama to a Hollywood celebrity shows that Sen. McCain "is engaging in the same old negative politics of Karl Rove" that Americans are tired of.
Food faux pas have plagued presidential candidates in the past. On a 1976 visit to Texas, Gerald Ford bit into a tamale with the corn husk still on. He lost the election to Jimmy Carter. In 2003, Mass. Sen. John Kerry was labeled effete when he ordered a Philly cheesesteak with Swiss instead of the usual Cheez Whiz topping.
Sen. Obama's chief message strategist Robert Gibbs served as Sen. Kerry's press secretary during the cheesesteak debacle. A few days later at the Iowa State Fair, famous for its deep-fried Twinkies and beer booths, Mr. Gibbs noticed Sen. Kerry buying a $4 strawberry smoothie. He made a frantic call to campaign staffers: "Somebody get a f-ing corn dog in his hand -- now!"
Sen. Obama drew cringes on a campaign stop in Adel, Iowa, in July 2007, when he asked a crowd of farmers: "Anybody gone into a Whole Foods lately and seen what they charge for arugula?" The upscale supermarket specializing in organic food doesn't have a single store in Iowa.
Lately, Sen. Obama is more careful. On a campaign stop in Lebanon, Mo., on Wednesday, Sen. Obama visited with voters at Bell's Diner and promptly announced "Well, I've had lunch today but I'm thinking maybe there is some pie."
He settled on fried chicken and told the crowd he's become a junk-food lover. "The healthy people, we'll give them the breasts," he told the waitress. "I'll eat the wings."
Struggles with weight-loss, on the other hand, can make a candidate seem more human. Some aides winced when footage of a sweat-drenched Mr. Clinton jogging into a McDonald's in Little Rock, Ark., aired ahead of the 1992 campaign. But the footage is widely believed to have helped the then-governor of Arkansas connect to voters in conservative-leaning states like Georgia and Tennessee, which eluded Democrats in 2000 and 2004. These states have a statistically higher number of overweight people than Democratic strongholds.
"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.
Sen. Clinton has said she tried Weight Watchers to keep the pounds off during her presidential bid -- a tidbit that appealed to her core of middle-age female supporters that Sen. Obama is now trying to woo.
Sen. Obama is not without vices. According to Dr. Scheiner's medical report, he has quit smoking "on several occasions and is currently using Nicorette gum with success." People close to the senator say he began smoking nearly three decades ago and smoked about five cigarettes a day.
Some voters say that even this adds to Sen. Obama's somewhat superhuman persona. "I mean, really, who quits smoking and doesn't gain any weight?" says 30-year-old Stella Metsovas, an Obama supporter in Laguna Beach, Calif.
Source: WSJ
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Hollywood actress featured in pro-Obama Web ad
August 4, 2008
Hollywood actress featured in pro-Obama Web ad
Posted: 02:20 PM ET
From CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow appears in a new Web ad encouraging Democrats living overseas to obtain absentee ballots and vote for Sen. Barack Obama.
(CNN) — Even in the wake of Sen. John McCain's recent efforts to liken Sen. Barack Obama to celebrity starlets Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, the group Democrats Abroad is not shying away from using some Hollywood star power to get its pro-Obama message out.
The Democratic group launched a new Web ad Monday that features Hollywood actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who lives in London. The nearly two-minute spot is directed at U.S. citizens living overseas and suggests that they request absentee ballots in order to participate in November's presidential election no matter where they are in the world.
"What happens at home affects us all," people featured in the ad say.
"Every single vote will count," adds Paltrow.
"Vote Democrat, Vote Obama, Vote from Abroad," flashes on the screen near the end of the ad.
The ad comes on the heels of controversy last week over a McCain campaign ad entitled, "Celeb" which called Sen. Obama "the biggest celebrity in the world" and included images of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. In keeping with McCain's celebrity theme, the Republican National Committee also launched a celebrity quiz entitled "Who said it? Celebrity Edition" on its Web site last Friday. The quiz features unattributed quotes and then asks visitors to the site to pick the "celebrity" who made the statement with Obama always being one of the available choices.
The Obama campaign responded to the McCain "Celeb" ad with an ad of its own called "Low Road" and Paris Hilton's mother, who has donated to the McCain campaign, has called the "Celeb" ad a "waste of money."
Obama turns 47
August 4, 2008Obama turns 47, staff loses present
Posted: 05:20 PM ET
From CNN Political Producer Alexander Marquardt
BOSTON, Massachusetts (CNN) -–Barack Obama turned 47 on Monday but it's just another four-state day on the campaign trail for the Illinois senator with a morning speech in Michigan followed by an afternoon fundraiser in Boston.
But he won't be getting a present today.
On Sunday night, Obama's trip director Marvin Nicholson was getting out of a yellow taxi at his hotel in Chicago with his laundry and Obama's present in the trunk. As he was greeted by hotel staff, the cab driver drove away with both the clean clothes and the present still in the trunk. The gift, which the campaign won't reveal, was from senior adviser Robert Gibbs, bodyman Reggie Love and Nicholson.
Nicholson has been calling Chicago taxi companies trying to track the present down. If it's any consolation to Obama, Harry Connick Jr. will sing him "Happy Birthday" at the fundraiser, the Boston Globe reports.
Obama celebrated the day with his wife and daughters at a barbecue with friends in the Chicago suburbs on Sunday, his first full day off the trail in weeks. And the crowds at Obama's rallies have been singing him "Happy Birthday" for the past several days.
The Illinois senator often jokes about his rapidly graying hair, telling Florida voters on Friday, "I've been getting gray since this campaign has started. When I started this campaign, everybody called me a young man. They"re not calling me that anymore."
In the battleground state of Michigan on Monday, Obama told the crowd that he couldn't think of a better place to spend his birthday than Lansing.
Source:CNN
************************************************************************
Well-heeled serenade Obama on his 47th birthday
BOSTON (AP) -- It may take a few months for Barack Obama's birthday wish to come true.
The expected Democratic presidential nominee turned 47 on Monday and shared his special day with hundreds of friends and other admirers, who paid up to $28,500 for the honor.
Introducing Obama, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said: "I asked Barack Obama what he wanted for his birthday. He said, `Indiana, Colorado and Virginia," said Kerry, referring to three potential swing states Obama hopes to win in the Nov. 4 election.
In a ballroom on the 33rd floor of a downtown skyscraper overlooking Boston Harbor, Obama was serenaded first by singer Harry Connick Jr. and his 10-year-old daughter, Kate, and then by the entire room in an animated rendition of "Happy Birthday."
About 850 people attended the birthday fundraiser, which cost between $1,000 and $4,600 per ticket. Among those, 250 also ate dinner with Obama - for $15,000 per ticket or $28,500 for a couple.
The Illinois senator received two gifts. The first was a Hawaiian shirt emblazoned with Red Sox symbols to wear on a vacation that begins later this week in Hawaii, where he was born. "As a White Sox fan, this hurts a little bit," Obama said.
But all was well when he opened the second present; it was a near-identical shirt with Chicago White Sox symbols on it.
Source:The Associated Press.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Campaign trail a gray area for Obama
Is baby-faced Barack Obama, the symbol of a new political generation, aging in front of us? "The gray is coming quick," he says.Photo: Composite image by Politico.com
Campaign trail a gray area for Obama
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN 7/3/08 6:17 PM EST
By his own admission this week, “the gray is coming quick,” so that it now dusts his head like snowflakes. The laugh lines cut a little deeper, and the crow's-feet around his eyes appear slightly more pronounced.
The presidency ages presidents, but so, it seems, has the longest campaign in modern history aged a candidate.
“By the time I’m sworn in, I will look the part,” Obama acknowledged to donors Wednesday in Colorado Springs, Colo., one month before his 47th birthday.
He confirmed what has been whispered for months among political insiders and raised in reader e-mails to journalists who cover him closely: Similar to President Bush and former President Bill Clinton, who came into office with far less gray hair and wrinkles than when they prepared to exit, Obama is already developing the presidential patina, a weathered look that builds after months of sleepless nights and stress.
In a campaign where age has been an undercurrent, at a time when 24-hour news coverage allows close examination of policies, pantsuits and personal tics, the graying of the presumptive Democratic nominee could be considered salient. Commentators subjected Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to such scrutiny — most notably Rush Limbaugh, who asked in December after an unflattering photo of her appeared on Drudge Report: “Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?”
“Men aging makes them look more authoritative, accomplished, distinguished,” Limbaugh said on his radio talk show. “Sadly, it’s not that way for women, and they will tell you.”
So will image consultants, public relations gurus, political strategists and anti-aging doctors. While Clinton might have received recommendations for a skin peel or Botox injections, public relations experts said Obama should embrace the change as — wait for it — good politics. Unlike Hollywood or New York, Washington is one town where aging can be a career booster. Looking the part of a president (translation: older, grayer and wrinkled) has always been a part of Obama’s challenge. While age still works against a woman candidate, Democrats seem to be pulling for more signs that the first-term Illinois senator is growing old.
“A little weathering is good,” said Howard Bragman, a veteran Hollywood public relations executive. “A little roughness around the edges, a few gray hairs and a little wrinkles around his face enhances” his presidential stature, particularly as he runs against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, 71.
This is a guy, after all, who appears intent on staving off the effects of aging. Obama doesn’t drink coffee and, until his primary election poll numbers depended on it, he barely consumed alcohol. He quit smoking — for the most part, admitting that he'd had a few cigarettes in recent months. He eats trail mix. He drinks green tea. And he exercises every day, even though he cuts short his sleep cycle for the pre-dawn workouts.
Ken Sunshine, a New York public relations consultant with a movie star clientele, exercised three treadmills away from Obama last week at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It was 6:30 a.m., and “he looked pretty [expletive] good,” Sunshine said.
Still, the effects of a grueling campaign schedule are becoming more apparent. The changes are subtle, but they're noticeable to those who watch him closely. Photographs from his rally last week with Sen. Clinton in Unity, N.H., captured a healthy amount of gray hair, which is usually most prominent just before his regular two-week trim. He went to the barber over the weekend.
“Physically, he looks older now than he did at the beginning of the campaign, not in terms of looking haggard or stressed out by the pressures, but as someone who has survived a challenge,” said Chris Lehane, an aide to then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who watched both bosses ripen before his eyes.
In some ways, Lehane said, the notion that he is aging perceptibly may be a corollary of his success. “Once you become the nominee, you do by definition carry yourself in a different way. You have been validated, and it makes you feel good about yourself. Inherently, you have a new stature.”
But the physical rigors of an 18-month campaign, including six months of sometimes 20-hour days during the primary, invariably take their toll. Watching his 9-year-old daughter play soccer this week after a day of campaigning, Obama cracked six huge yawns during a 34-minute game, ABC News reported on its website.
“This particular campaign has gone on in dog years. So while it may be one year on the human calendar, it may have been seven years,” Lehane said. “That is typical of what every year is like in the White House. The campaign has been close to what a candidate goes through in office.”
Obama’s barber for the past 15 years told Politico in February 2007 that he started noticing the gray hair soon after he entered the Senate in 2005. If he registered a four on a scale of one to 10 at the beginning of the campaign, he is now a six on the gray meter, said Zariff, who goes by only one name and works at the Hyde Park Hair Salon in Chicago.
“That is normal for his age,” Zariff said this week.
So has Obama ever attempted to speed or slow the aging clock by coloring his hair?
“No, most definitely not,” Zariff said with a laugh. “It will be quite some time before we go there.
Source: POLITICO
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