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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