Election trivia on height

As a tall woman, height trivia interests me.
Did you know that historically the tallest contender in every presidential election, with one exception, has always been elected to the presidency? I heard that bit of presidential trivia prior to the election of 1992. Obviously Perot was not even in the running. The only height he had came from standing on his stack of money.
Of the other two? Clinton was a fraction of an inch taller than Poppa Bush. Poppa lost by a hair. Why has the tallest traditionally taken the election? It probably is related to the psychological study where folks were shown pictures of groups of people. When asked which one was the leader, most assumed it was the tallest person pictured. In U.S. history, it is not so much “May the best man win,” as it is “The tallest man will win.” So Nov. 7, when fellow reporters and editors asked who I thought would win, I said, “the tallest one.” I validated my projection with the height trivia.
Forget politics, it all has to do with the perception that with height comes leadership and Gore is bit taller than Bush. I stayed up way too late watching the election returns and went to bed thinking that the short guy had bagged it for the second time in U.S. history. The next morning the tallest guy had the majority of the votes across the country, but the shorter guy was favored to take the Electoral College.
News casters said it was all about chads, recounts and poor-sportsmanship. Actually the historical election of 2000 was a seven week protest, “but he can’t be the leader! He isn’t the biggest.” It just went against our historical grain. Personally, the more I heard self-righteous speeches about, “all the votes must be counted,” with the implied, “unless they might be against me,” the smaller the contenders became.
By December they were both about a foot shorter than Napoleon. Ultimately the slightly shorter man took the office with the electoral college vote. It will take a mighty big man to deal with the debris from the recent election. I am hoping for a major growth spurt in the ‘Napoleonic contenders.’ Many tall people learn, in time, to back up, sit down and not loom over the short ones. Looming over the other guy was part of the cold war psychology. My collection of height trivia includes an interesting tidbit that happened along the border between North and South Korea.
The American military always sent the tallest soldiers to stand guard at the border crossings simply because they loomed over their North Korean counterparts. That’s what elections are about: people and parties pulling themselves up to their fullest political height to say, “I am better than him because…”
After the past couple months, it is past time to be standing on principles, refusing to hear or see what the other person is saying. When I want to look a shorter person in the eye, I sit down with them. If I can’t sit down, I step back so the short person and I both get a better perspective of each other.
Being the big man in the White House isn’t all that different – especially since he started out as the shorter man.