Word: looked
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...eternally looking for somebody who supposedly looks like a President. Once again, the presidential field is prematurely swarming with contenders and pretenders, each selling a face and figure as heaven-sent for White House display. But how is one to judge? If the nation had a vivid idea of what the presidential look should be, political parties and voters alike would be saved considerable uncertainty...
Such a concept, alas, is not easy to come by. Political commentators have been more preoccupied with contrived presidential images than with actual looks. Some lofty thinkers even feel that the look of a President is of little significance. In reality, a leader's countenance and mien have always been of great moment to the led, and a President embodies an epic load of national symbolism. Externals have become ever more crucial since ubiquitous television has taken over as the main medium of campaigning. Today, as Daniel Boorstin notes in his book The Image, "our national politics has become...
...founding fathers knew what a President should look like, they kept it to themselves. A President, says the Constitution, need only be a native-born resident and old enough (35) to be dry behind the ears. The law is mute on the shape and size of those ears and other elements of physiognomy, stature and hirsuteness that go into the chimerical mix of looks...
Still, who could say with certitude that Nixon did not look like a Chief Executive and that Kennedy did, or vice versa? Is a President clean-cut? Ulysses S. Grant would have fit right in at an Allen Ginsberg poetry reading. Trim? Honest Grover Cleveland's dreadnought corpulence might have served as a model for Thomas Nast's potbellied crooks. Is the presidential face august, humane, agleam with probity? John Adams might have been cast as Scrooge or a consecrated bookkeeper. John Quincy Adams looked incipiently satanic. James Monroe's bug-eyed visage might have...
Granted the dizzying diversity of looks in the gallery of past Chief Executives, how is anyone to know what an ideal President should look like? The odd truth is that Americans do know. But how? What picture of a President resides in the popular imagination? What, in short, is the operating archetype...