Why Trump Is Right To Worry About That Glass of Water

Source: Politico | June 14, 2020 | Jeff Greenfield

Even if it’s baseless and unfair, few things stick to a modern president like images of physical frailty.

What to call it—“Photo-oops”? “Glass of Watergate?”

Whatever the label, when the videos appeared on Saturday of President Trump shuffling down that ramp at West Point, a general walking attentively by his side, and using two hands to guide a water glass to his lips, the response on liberal Twitter threatened to deplete America’s Strategic Schadenfreude Reserve.

The same man who ran for office by mocking the height and stamina of his rivals, who celebrates dominance as the cardinal virtue of leadership, whose 2016 campaign compiled similar slips by Hillary Clinton into a dark TV commercial accusing her of lacking the strength to serve as president, found himself looking like a longtime resident of Shady Grove Home For the Weary.

The images led to some elaborate online speculations and diagnoses, and for Trump, the attention clearly struck a nerve. Why else would the president take to Twitter to offer the excuse that the ramp was “very slippery” (a claim that a New York Times story labeled highly dubious)?

He might well be revealing his own insecurities. But he’s also right about one important thing: just how damaging such a picture of weakness can be. It may sound trivial, and it’s often unfair, but when a modern president, or even a candidate, exhibits physical weakness, it comes with a political cost.

It helped sink President Gerald Ford—perhaps the most athletic of our recent presidents; football star at the University of Michigan, skilled skier. But a couple of stumbles down the steps of Air Force One, a tumble on the ski slopes, and the relentless mockery of Chevy Chase on “Saturday Night Live” cemented a new image of Ford that stuck: A fumbling character barely able to put one foot in front of the other.

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Without overstating the impact of these moments, it’s interesting to note that in each instance, the president lost his next election. And in 2016, so did challenger Hillary Clinton, whose coughing fits and use of back pillows became tropes in conservative media, fueling rumors circulated by the National Enquirer and others that she was virtually at death’s door.

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Is this simply a demonstration of how the image has replaced reality in modern days? The preoccupation with physical vigor certainly isn’t new; in flogging his strength and stamina, Trump is drawing on a public fixation that has been part of our politics since, literally, the beginning. Of course George Washington would be our first president; he not only commanded the winning army, but was one of the tallest of public figures at the time. The U.S. has consistently turned to military heroes as presidential nominees, from Andrew Jackson to Zachary Taylor to Ulysses Grant to Benjamin Harrison to Theodore Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower to JFK. (It doesn’t always work, of course, or John Kerry, a tall military vet, pilot and impressive athlete, would have walked off with the 2004 election.)

The wish for vigor, surely, is in part a holdover from ancient times, when we wanted a leader who could fight off marauders from over the hill, but it still plays a role in the less rational part of our decision-making. Since 1900, two-thirds of presidential races have been won by the taller candidate; this may explain why, during the 2016 town hall debate, Donald Trump kept looming behind Clinton, as if to dramatize his stature.

Yes, it may seem absurd to argue that in a time of pandemic, economic catastrophe, demands for racial justice, and a president often at war with the norms of a Constitutional republic, that a couple of video images should really preoccupy either the president or his critics. But Donald Trump has a native instinct for knowing what matters—not what the pundits say, or what civics classes tell you, but what really sticks with people. And history says he’s right to be concerned about this one.

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