PRETTY IN RED

Mitt’s got it. Michelle’s got it, and Rick’s got it, too. What do the three Republican Party candidates vying for their party’s nod for presidential candidate have?

Pulchritude.

Pulchritude you ask? Yes pulchritude...beauty.

Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry are short on a lot of political assets. On the other hand, they may be three of the prettiest people in American politics today. They are the bevy of beauties vying for the Republican nomination to be their party’s candidate for president of the United States in what is turning out to be one odd political contest filled with pageantry, predictability, and prettiness, but clearly little else.

The Grand Old Party has become the Gorgeous Old Party, home to telegenic candidates. Yes, Barbie and Ken the three talking dolls be. Pull the string on the back of their bodies and hear them repeat their tape-recorded phrases: No new taxes, fiscal discipline, no new taxes. I think the tape is broken.

Mitt, a doll’s name to be sure -- hear me Mattel? -- is handsome as the day is long, but reminds me of one of the male models on the pages of a Sears Catalogue. He looks like a mannequin frozen in time, wooden, permanently posed in that awkward position models affect on the back spread of cheap Sunday newspaper supplements, arm crooked, face bland but attractive, hair polished to perfection … knock, knock, anybody home blah, blah, blah?

Bachmann is a Veronica, out of the pages of an Archie comic book. Etched to comic book perfection, all dolled-up, Bachmann is more a Miss America pageant candidate-type in looks, what with her 1950’s bouffant hair-do, her Max Factor 1950’s Pan make-up drawn to perfection, and her wide-eyed glare. Yes, Tina Brown, you were right to put that frightening photo of Michelle on the cover of Newsweek. It wasn’t sexist; it was Michelle Bachmann, a woman too pretty to be the girl next door, but also lacking the sensuality that would have primed her more for a Hollywood career than the congressional one she opted for and her I.Q was not meant for. “Here she comes, Miss Minnesota,” tra la la…


Now about Rick Perry . . . Rick is a cool name for a cool dude. And a dude Perry is, replete with a face burnished with the manly-etchings of the bristling Texas sun, hair perfectly-coiffed as if he’d never been out on the range, his dress flamboyant, his swagger unrelenting. Rick is a rhinestone cowboy, not quite a Roy Rogers with a drawl that rolls off the tongue just a little bit sweeter than it need, making the dumb things he says such as Texas should secede from the Union, the Fed Chairman is committing treason, we should repeal the 16th and 17th amendments, ending direct election of U.S. Senators and the federal income tax sound all the more sweet. Happy trails to you Rick, tra la la.

Dolls, all three, frightening reminders of the words of the great theologian and prosaist Baltasar Gracian, “Beauty and folly are generally companions,” Sarah Palin, the original GOP doll.

Halli Casser-Jayne is the author of A YEAR IN MY PAJAMAS WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA, The Politics of Strange Bedfellows. She is the co-host of the popular The Halli and MoJoe Show on BlogTalkRadio airing Sunday 5 PM/EST. To read more of her musings visit her @ The CJ Political Report dot com and Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.