I know why Barack is concentrating on his triceps - legend has it that John McCain can't lift his arms above his head. Who's going to save the world if the nuclear codes are stored above shoulder height?
CAN YOU IMAGINE Margaret Thatcher performing squat thrusts, barking out the numbers as she approached - then pounded past - the one hundred mark? John Bruton feeling the burn in his quads halfway through his spinning class? Richard Nixon wiping down the bench and glugging a high-electrolyte drink after pressing a few hundred pounds? Can you visualise this information being imparted by the people who ran their election campaigns? The reason I ask is that Paul Kuhn of Politico recently worked out beside Barack Obama in a Washington gym, filed a piece about the workout session, and the information has generated a great deal of interest among the American public, who are queuing up to adopt the Obama workout plan.
Polling day in the US election is finally moving into view, just over three weeks from now, and if you want a body like Obama's you need to get a move on - "he ran a full body workout. Standing tricep push downs, elbows tight to his hips. Lying triceps presses but with single 15lbs dumbbells in each hand, his cap falling off . . . he had a prescribed workout on paper that Reggie held, though at times Obama did his own thing, focusing mostly on his triceps. In one set, he started with 50lbs for overhead dumbbell extensions. He lifted it once, grimacing. He moved straight away to 40lbs."
I know why Barack is concentrating on his triceps - legend has it that John McCain can't lift his arms above his head. Who's going to save the world if the nuclear codes are stored above shoulder height? There are other stories pertaining to the physical condition of the candidate mockingly referred to as "The Oldest Man In The World", but behind the ageist jibes lies an interesting truth - surface appeal continues to march towards the top of the election agenda.
In our country, some politicians are routinely subjected to abuse based on their appearance. I've even heard people questioning their suitability for the job, based on the way they look. But in the American election campaign, the public obsession with body image is being acknowledged and courted, and it begs the question: if the objectification of Barack Obama is the only thing that will mobilise apathetic voters, should they be allowed to decide the outcome of anything - apart from American Idol? I don't think an American president should need to look as if he could beat up Vladimir Putin. If we needed that, we would see lantern jawed ex-bodybuilding champions sweep into high political office in America, and that's never going to happ . . . Oh.
None of us are impervious to the appeal of the surface, least of all me. You don't get to vote for him, but in 1980, I was somewhat obsessed with the pope. The robes, the crosses, the Popemobile. Don't ask me what it was in particular. I'm not sure I even believed in God, but that year I definitely believed in the pope. He had visited Ireland the year before, and the following summer we took our first foreign holiday in Majorca. I remember nothing of the flight, but when the plane landed and we disembarked, I walked down the steps, onto the searing tarmac, got down on my knees and kissed the ground.
I'd like to think I was making some kind of wry commentary on the intersection of show business and religion. Maybe I thought that this was what you did upon landing in a foreign country. It was, after all, my first time on a plane. But the response to the letter I wrote to him after he visited Ireland is what's most interesting. My reply from his secretariat arrived in a large brown envelope of the kind that has cardboard running along one side to protect the contents.
Inside the envelope was a letter signed by the man himself, but I had already joined the Dennis the Menace fan club, and I knew there would be more swag - a foldaway sceptre perhaps, or a skullcap of the kind that he wore under his hat. I rooted around and pulled out two glossy 8x10 publicity stills - what can only be described as action shots. In the first, the pope was wearing a red cape and blessing a young woman in some large outdoor arena. In the other, he was all in white, standing in the Popemobile, blessing a thronged highway-full of people.
The response to my letter was not dissimilar to the kind that a fan of Donny Osmond would have received. Seen from a distance, John Paul II's appearance in each shot was like that of Vegas-era Elvis, resplendent in white, cast against a backdrop of adoring crowds. Coincidence? Lots of people voted for JFK because he reminded them of Frank, and who can blame them? Recently we've had Clinton-as-Elvis and the airbrushing of Nicolas Sarkozy's love handles by Paris Match. It's possible that people voted for Blair because the literal youth and vigour of the man dove-tailed with the changing of the guard he spoke about so . . . vigorously.
If the story of the best films is summed up in the opening scene and the opening scene is summed up by the title, the creeping campaign of body-image adapts this essential reduction to the political sphere. When it comes to public figures, image is now nearly everything. By their appearance, politicians tell the people what it is they stand for, and now that we know what they bench press, we can make an informed decision.