“Pretty Is As Pretty Does”

I saw where Sarah Palin dropped out of the presidential race. Good for her! She was too pretty to be president. And I’m not comparing her with Haley Mills or Farrah Fawcett here. That beauty thing is relevant as to situation, location, eye of the beholder, who’s in the picture with you, how dark it is in the back booth…..

She’s better looking than Ross Perot or John McCain. And I’d give her the nod over Al Gore and Newt Gingrich. But running for President of the United States is not a beauty contest.

OR is it?

It wasn’t in Abraham Lincoln’s day. I don’t think he could make the cover of GQ. People magazine usually goes for flashy blonds. Sports Illustrated doesn’t cover rail splitting so Abe couldn’t have adorned that cover either. And it is rather hard to imagine him debating illegal immigration, world trade agreements or the Wall Street roller coaster on TV today. He would be a publicist’s nightmare! We’ve got a guy here with good walking around sense, who could acquit himself well in most any situation, honest to a fault, a real viable candidate…..but we can’t show his face until after the election!

Picking a president is kinda like searching for the right person to take to the prom. We all, naturally, want to take the best looking date in town. I was seeking a tall, sleek, handsome beauty queen. No one preferred to be tied to a dog when the band struck up “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White”. If you were lucky enough, you’d find a semi-cute girl to walk in on your arm and the evening was all bright and rosy until she opened her mouth! You asked if she’d like some punch and she replied, rather too quickly and a little louder than necessary, “Ain’t they got no ice cream!”

You mercifully turn down her street after the “dance of a thousand nightmares” has drawn to a close and she’s still filling your ear, “Did you see Jo Anne’s dress? I thought them puffed up sleeves were wings! If she had flapped about twice I swear she would have lifted off the ground. I can’t believe they didn’t have no ice cream!” You finally make it to the front door and are hurrying your good night when the erstwhile beauty adds the clincher, “Next time we go out, how’s bout you bring the chewing tobacco!”

Didn’t someone once say it’s not the wrinkle free skin or the surgically repaired nose…..but the content of your character that counts!

And please, PLEASE don’t think I’m saying that since Sarah Palin is attractive she is a ditz. Far from it! I dated a good looking girl once that was smarter, more thoughtful and much more in touch with reality than I was. If she’d had just a little money I would have married her in a heartbeat. I’m simple saying you can’t judge a book by looking at the cover.

But here is the real problem. If I take the wrong date to the prom, no harm—no foul. Sure, I’m uncomfortable for an evening. The guys give me the “we can’t believe you brought her” look and there is an awkward moment on the front steps when I pretend to tell her what a wonderful time I had. But the evening ends and I can get on with my life. If we select the wrong president the prom lasts for four years! That is an eternity to be saddled with the wrong date. Can you image the embarrassment and uncomfortable moments that can arise in that length of time! It could warp you for life! Or set you on a road that you don’t want to go down.

Harry Truman wouldn’t win any beauty contest but I think he was the right man at the right time in our history. The much honored George Washington had such bad teeth he would hardly open his mouth. His hair fell over his collar and he was only an average speech renderer at best. Every picture I’ve seen of Thomas Jefferson looks like he was raised on green apples and sour onions. Dwight David Eisenhower helped win a World War and “Presidented” over one of the greatest decades in our history but he looked like a quiet, unassuming, ordinary man to me. You wouldn’t have picked any of these fellers for “Dancing with the Stars”.

Martin Luther King was right! It is not about the pigmentation of your skin. Or who your “momma and them” are or how much money your Aunt Matilda has accumulated or how much the boys think of you down at the Lodge….. IT IS about the content of your heart!

Here’s our mission, if we choose to accept it. We’ve got to run down a long list of “possibles” and select the correct presidential candidate. Don’t expect any true insight from ABC, CNN, Jon Stewart and the like. Sometimes your neighbor doesn’t know any more than you do! And the candidates don’t really help. They put on their best smile for the camera and yell for lower taxes, more jobs, shrinking national debt and a chicken in every pot….. It’s hard to see their hearts through all the mudwhomp and habberdashing!       

But we’ve got to do due diligence on this one. Don’t fall for the pretty face or the flim-flam rhetoric. If we ever needed to get to the heart of the matter—it is now! ’Cause here’s the bottom line, guys, I don’t want the next president to turn out like my first date to the prom. We might not could survive four years of that!

Respectfully,

Kes