From the WSJ Opinion Archives
TASTE COMMENTARY
Hey, Flyboy
Women voters agree: President Bush is a hottie!
I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president, landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that amazing uniform, looking--how to put it?--really hot. Also presidential, of course. Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly "hot," as in virile, sexy and powerful.
You don't see a lot of that in my neighborhood, the Upper West Side of Manhattan. (I'm told there's more of it in the "red" states.) I was mesmerized. I flipped around watching W. land on many channels. I watched the whole speech, which was fine. But a business suit just doesn't do it the way a flight suit does. In the course of this I peeked over at my husband, the banker. He was in his third month of reading a book about the Six Day War and didn't seem to notice.
Nonetheless, I know that I am not the only one who entertained these untoward thoughts. The American media were fully aware of how stunning the president looked last week. And they chose to defuse it by referring endlessly to the "photo-oppiness" of the event. The man uses overwhelming military force to vanquish a truly evil foe, facing down balking former "allies," and he is not taken seriously as a foreign-policy president. He out top-guns the Hollywood version, and all the media can talk about is the impending campaign commercial.
With a few exceptions: Brian Williams shook his head in awe at the clip and said, if I may paraphrase, "that, ladies and gentlemen, is a president at the pinnacle of success, having just won a war." The New York Post ran the hot shot on its front page. And Newsweek called it a photo-op but gave the president what can only be called a centerfold.
Meanwhile David Gergen, arguably as bloodless a creature as has ever graced too many White Houses and TV shows, actually broke into a grin and said: "This will set the standard for advance men for years to come." Advance men? I think it will set a new standard for women voters.
I decided to run a reality check among the soccer moms I spend my days with. At my daughter's East Side school, my friend Emily, a mother of two and probably a liberal, examined the picture of the president in his fly-boy gear that I just happened to have in my purse. She looked carefully, grinned and said, "He's a hottie. No doubt about it. Really a hottie. Why haven't I noticed this before? He looks so much better than Michael Douglas in that movie we saw," comparing the tired, indifferent megastar of "The American President" to the totally present leader of the free world.
Alexandra, an unmarried event planner in her 30s, e-mailed: "Hot? SO HOT!!!!! THAT UNIFORM!" In a more restrained way, my friend Maggie, a writer/mom, explained: "I think he is actually protecting me and my sons, and I find that attractive in a man." Suzi, who did her mom time and now writes biographies, also began with restraint. I asked, casually, what she thought about President Bush. She answered, carefully, "He's so confident. He is a very credible, trustworthy leader." "Yeah," I pursue, "but do you think he's sexy?" "Oh God, yes," she said. "I mean, that swagger. George Bush in a pair of jeans is a treat to watch." This from a soft-spoken woman inclined to intellectual pursuits.
Back on the West Side, among the liberals I live surrounded by, there was dissent. At my younger children's preschool, comments ranged from "well he's cute, but not my type" to "I can't think of anything more revolting." Many of them still cite Bill Clinton and his allegedly penetrating intellect as more appealing.
Liberals make such a fetish of intellect. But who cares how smart you are if you can't make a decision and follow through? Mr. Clinton could not seem to do that with foreign policy, or with Miss Lewinsky. Still, I concede that having a Republican president with sex appeal is kind of a new idea. We haven't actually seen one in living memory.
Ronald Reagan was supposedly quite a "swordsman in his youth," as an older colleague used to remind us at the newspaper where I worked in the 1980s. But as president he was charismatic in a paternal way. He was too old to be sexy, even when he seemed to win the Cold War singlehandedly. As for Bush père, despite being tall, athletic and personally impressive, he was just too preppy to be sexy. As for other Republicans, no amount of Viagra could help Bob Dole. And, alas, Marilyn Quayle once defended her fit and handsome husband (my former boss) from scandalous allegations by noting that "anyone who knows Dan knows that he would much rather play golf than have sex."
Of course, during the Clinton era I thought it was a great virtue, not to mention relief, that GOP candidates didn't seem to ooze that lasciviousness that leaked from every pore of Bill Clinton. Or any sexuality at all.
Who could avoid reading excessively about the Clinton sexuality? I recall reading an extended colloquy about hip women having dreams about sleeping with the president. And then there were all the women who did sleep with the president. Or whatever. Sex. Not quite sex. Frustrating, bad, unidirectional sex. (Military strikes to divert us from trials about lying about sex.) In those years I was (mistakenly) convinced that the country would elect someone like Phil Gramm just so we could stop thinking about sex and return to policy.
After all, the era was ushered in by Gennifer Flowers "writing" in Penthouse about Bill Clinton's prodigious lovemaking talents and by free-lance feminist Barbara Ehrenreich telling us that after the dry years of Reagan-Bush repressive patriarchal oppression, it was a good thing for a lively new first couple to display their hip sexuality, reminding us how far the culture had actually come. While there was a spark of truth to that claim, the spark turned into a forest fire, singeing everything in its way except, perhaps, the then first lady--who was universally understood not to be a beneficiary of her husband's special gifts.
Women in the media were particularly susceptible. Remember Nina Burleigh, who wrote in Mirabella how she wanted to continue her Air Force One game of pinochle with the president back at the hotel "and see what happened"? More specifically, she later said that she would be happy to provide oral sex to thank him for keeping abortion legal.
This was all, of course, demeaning, degrading, offensive to the high art of democratic self-governance--and highly entertaining. And of course the Bush people can't let their more dignified version of it get out of hand. After all, we are no longer on the beach enjoying a holiday from history. History is back with a vengeance, and it is appropriate and correct that we pay attention to the substance of policy matters. Besides, the thing about George that makes it hard for anyone's fantasies to run amok is that there is reason to believe that the only one who is going to know what all this heat is worth is Laura.
