I don’t like our president. I mean, I really, really, really don’t like the man. It’s not because of the whole war in Iraq thing. Nor is it because our economy is doing its impression of a negative cubic function (y=-x^3, for those of you curious enough to graph it).
It’s not because deficit spending is now to be measured in illions-starting-with-T. It’s not even because he is determined to add “nucular” and “misunderestimate” to the lexicon. Those might be good reasons to dislike the man, but my own reason is far simpler: He lacks teeth.
I don’t mean that in some clever, euphemistic sense, to imply that he’s wimpy or that his policies are weak; I actually mean he’s missing those pearly white incisors, canines and molars that most of us have behind our upper lips. Actually, I just mean he could be missing them.
The problem is, if he has them, I’ve never seen them and you probably haven’t either. Maybe he’s got dentures? A bridge? Caps? Braces? Or perhaps he has a nice gold-encrusted front tooth with a dainty diamond accent as a token of his misspent youth. Anything is possible.
As I watch his regular public appearances, I find that I am increasingly too distracted trying to catch a glimpse of his missing teeth to pay much attention to the substance of what he’s saying. I ask you, how can you follow a leader into war, deficit and new vocabulary words if he consistently fails to demonstrate to our nation’s impressionable youth the importance of good dental hygiene?
I don’t mean to imply that there aren’t times when it’s possible to know too much about a president’s physiology. I can still recall — with bone-chilling clarity — the sight of Bill Clinton’s chubby white thighs protruding from running shorts as he jogged along with his Secret Service agents.
Wouldn’t you think that, as a first world nation with a booming economy, we could have fronted the man a nice pair of sweat pants with the presidential seal in addition to his salary and saved millions from those traumatic memories?
Clinton wasn’t the only one who shared too much, nor was he the worst. For those of you inclined to remember Ronald Reagan and his dapper turn-out fondly, I have just one word: polyps.
Bush Sr. might have been okay. You could occasionally verify that he flossed. He didn’t have chubby white thighs, and if he had polyps, I never heard about them. Then he went and displayed the contents of his stomach all over the Japanese prime minister.
And while I may want to see a bit more of Bush Jr.’s pearly whites, I think we can all agree that Jimmy Carter showed perhaps a bit too much.
Now that I think of it, I don’t think we’ve had an adequate physical specimen in the White House since John F. Kennedy. Now, there was a man with thighs and teeth in the correct quantities.
I suppose that in the world we live in, it is a bit silly to reflect on the physiology of a leader rather than his substance. I, however, prefer to focus on thoughts that make me laugh rather than those that would make me cry.