Diane Roberts
According to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton does not appear presidential. As he remarked in an ABC television interview last week: “Well, I just don’t think she has a presidential look, and you need a presidential look.”
A presidential look. Hmm. Let’s think this through.
Could it be the hands? Everyone knows presidents should have small hands and her hands are on the large side.
Could it be the ties? She doesn’t even wear a tie! You know who else doesn’t wear a tie? Fidel Castro. Kim Jong Un. And that Iranian guy.
What about the lipstick? Have you ever seen a president in lipstick? Other than Ronald Reagan that time.
Maybe it’s the smiling. She doesn’t do enough of it. George Washington was a big smiler, you know, rocking those wooden teeth.
Of course, you could say she smiles too much. Not dignified. Much better to affect a sphincterish pout.
And what’s with that hair? OK, it’s blond (Thomas Jefferson was a blond), and styled and everything, but when the wind blows, it, like, moves.
Everyone knows presidential hair should not budge during public appearances. Presidential hair should have the gravitas that comes from Extra Firm Hold hair spray and/or staples. Donald Trump’s hair only moves at night, when he lets it loose to hunt small animals for food.
Even Hillary Clinton’s insults are lame and thus unpresidential. “Basket of Deplorables”? Jeez Louise, what is she, some kind of professor?
Here’s how a truly presidential person applies the old verbal slap-down: refer to Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas;” ridicule John McCain for being a POW; call Megyn Kelly “lightweight” and a “bimbo.” Say Ruth Bader Ginsburg is senile, David Brooks is an idiot, and Michael Bloomberg is short.
And for good measure, disparage a Gold Star family who happens to be Muslim, diss a crying baby, label Mexicans “rapists” and “murderers,” and make fun of Serge Kovaleski, a New York Times reporter who suffers from arthrogryposis.
Side note: Ann Coulter insists Donald Trump wasn’t making fun of Kovaleski, he was merely “doing standard retard.” But Trump rejects the very notion of “standard.” I happen to think if Trump was “doing” a “retard,” it would be the most retarded, HUGELY retarded, luxury retarded, the absolutely best retarded act anyone has ever seen in the history of the planet.
Back to that unpresidential Hillary, which is to say: pneumonia. Who ever heard of a president with pneumonia? Grover Cleveland had gout. JFK suffered from Addison’s disease so bad he got hooked on opioids. Taft was morbidly obese. Abraham Lincoln got smallpox. Andrew Jackson had rotting teeth, migraines, bleeding in his lungs, and pain from the bullet wounds he got in two separate duels. He was also as crazy as a cut snake.
But he didn’t have pneumonia. Only William Henry Harrison got pneumonia, and we all remember what a disaster he was.
Remember when Trump said this about Carly Fiorina? “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve detected a slight resemblance between Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Clinton’s eyes are bigger. Fiorina is taller. Clinton’s a D; Fiorina is an R …
Call me crazy — and definitely unpresidential — but I think what Trump means when he says Clinton lacks that “presidential look” is really that she lacks a penis.
Women don’t play football. Women don’t join the infantry. Women don’t become president — except for when they do.
___
Diane Roberts’s book “Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America” will be out in paperback this fall. She teaches at FSU.
