Paging candidate Everyman

posted at 12:58 pm on December 1, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Elections ]   

Politico’s Mike Allen was a guest on Erin Burnett‘s CNN program OutFront Wednesday, hawking his new e-book Playbook 2012: The Right Fights Back (co-authored by Evan Thomas). In this video clip of the segment, he reveals some juicy gossip about two of the GOP candidates, beginning with Mitt Romney (h/t Mediaite).

Among Romney’s “strange food habits” are pulling the cheese from his pizza and the skin from KFC fried chicken, prompting Burnett to joke, “I’m glad to hear he’s got vices.”

What are some of his other vices? Well, there’s humility, if you can call that a vice. A relative of Romney confided in Allen that the multi-millionaire likes to “repair” holes in gloves with duct tape rather than throw the gloves away. And then there is Romney’s compulsive need to work out. He’s so committed to personal health that if his hotel has no gym, he’ll run through the hallways. Good thing for him that doesn’t sound weird.

Maybe my reaction to this portrait of the candidate is colored by his testiness and weak performance during his interview with Bret Baier on Tuesday, but these details are distressingly reminiscent of another candidate. They call to mind a candidate so pure of body that he would choke down a waffle for the cameras, though his preference would have been for a bowl of his standard high-fiber gruel—a man whose physical prowess was such that it drew admiration from the press.

That candidate, who went on to become President Barack Obama, has been exposed as a fraud. He may have convinced his acolytes that he runs a tight ship at the White House, where his staff is compelled to endure a “near-mandatory regimen [of] egg-white omelets and workouts with the president’s personal trainer,” but the man was—and for all we know still is—a smoker! Either he’s the unluckiest dude on earth, having gotten caught by the paparazzi time and again stuffing his face with fast food to score political points, or he shares his wife’s addiction to burgers and fries.

The bottom line is that the president of the United States doesn’t need to be Superman. I would have been perfectly content for Obama to live exclusively on milkshakes and candy bars throughout his first term if he made good on his promise to pull the country out of its financial black hole. My vote for the next president will likewise have nothing to do with his diet or affectionate anecdotes showcasing his human side.

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