Here’s the Long and Short of a Giant Issue

Earlier in this presidential campaign, I toyed with the notion that we had finally outgrown the ancient bias that has haunted me, and millions like me, much of our lives.

It is a genetic deficiency that, I admit, makes my net game a joke and forces regular readjustment of rental car seats. But for a while, I thought I saw signs that it would no longer be considered a fit topic for public derision and would be expunged forever as a subliminal measure of political competence and leadership ability.

I was wrong, of course.

Editorial cartoons and Johnny Carson’s monologues punctured my optimism. I suppose they were amusing to some.

The cartoons showed Michael Dukakis, the distinguished governor of Massachusetts and a man about to lead our nation’s largest and oldest political party, with his body drawn so grossly stunted he had to stand on top of a computer to see over the top of his lectern. Carson reeled off three or four Dukakis “height” jokes. “He may be the first President in history,” said the 5-foot, 10 1/2-inch comedian, “who will have to be lifted up to see his own inaugural parade.”

I cannot speak for Dukakis. Perhaps he does not mind that he is only 5 feet 8, a half foot shorter than his apparent Republican opponent George Bush (6 feet 2). Perhaps he does not find it as ominous as I do that in only two of nine television-era presidential campaigns, 1972 and 1976, has the shorter candidate won. Perhaps he feels his victories over Jesse Jackson (6 feet 2 1/2) and Sen. Al Gore (6 feet 1) exempt him from this handicap.

I doubt it. One of my untested theories is that the difficulties women encounter in politics are as much a result of heightism as they are of sexism, and that Walter Mondale would have had better luck with Dianne Feinstein (5 feet 9) than he did with Geraldine Ferraro (5 feet 4) as a running mate in 1984.

Granted, little rigorous research has been done in this area, one more sign of the depth of the problem. Can you imagine the speed with which Sen. William Proxmire (6 feet 1) would have awarded his Golden Fleece to a National Science Foundation grant on life cycles of the slightly undersized? Nonetheless, it is time to give long overdue consideration to the origins of this prejudice, and ways it might be cured.

I confess to being hypersensitive on this issue. The last time I checked, I was 5 feet, 5 3/4 inches tall. Those fractions are important when you’re trying to intimidate editors, or impress sources, or keep your eldest child (age 15, 5 feet 5) from telling you for the 98th time that older people tend to shrink.

The boy is right, of course. That is why for the last 11 or 12 years I have avoided tape measures and those “height” measuring devices attached to doctors’ office scales.

There are more destructive forms of bias than heightism, to be sure, and being short has some advantages, such as an apparently longer life span. Most of us below the average American “height,” 5 feet 9.1 for men, 5 feet 3.7 for women) have learned to live with it. I have absorbed, without flinching, a sales clerk’s suggestion that I try the junior department and have grown accustomed to being told to occupy the front row in group pictures.

Few of us want to be President, but it seems only fair that we have a better shot at the job than has been the case recently.

Unfortunately, the minute you raise this issue with those of larger stature, they often look at it in personal terms, which produces embarrassment or mirth, but little reasoned debate. So I hasten to say I do not think the Washington Post’s failure so far to explore the “height” issue can be blamed on the fact that its publisher and executive editor are at least 6 feet “tall.”

Our ancestors were much shorter. Perhaps that is part of the problem. If we all had descended from giraffes, diminutive stature might have become a mark of honor and progress--the shorter the man or woman, the further the evolutionary distance from those primitive, unattractively “tall” progenitors. Or maybe if we, like many insects, grew from larvae larger than our adult form, we would not associate small with infantilism and immaturity.

It is not just that we of diminutive stature are so frequently slight. Much worse, over the course of history, we have acquired an undeservedly bad reputation. Troublesome figures like Nero and Napoleon come to mind. Antagonists in fables and comics--Rumpelstiltskin, various trolls, Andy Capp, the King of Id--often seem to be compensating for their lack of “height.”

What can be done to wipe away this stain? Where can Dukakis Democrats turn to stave off catastrophe?

Republicans found salvation a few years ago in Hollywood. I think the key to wiping out heightism in our time also lies here.

Few have noticed, which in part proves my point, how many successful, yet short, leading men have emerged in the films of the last several years. Richard Dreyfuss, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Mark Hamill and even Robert Redford do not come close to the stature of John Wayne, James Stewart or Cary Grant. How do they do it?

As far as I can tell, it is mostly good scripts, clever casting and camera angles. Audiences are willing to ignore the fact that the star can barely see over the steering wheel during the car chase if the words he speaks are clever and the dialogue ignores his disability. Casting directors look for a leading lady who at least approximates the hero’s “height.” An actor even as small as Michael J. Fox (5 feet 4) can overcome this handicap with the right script, close attention to camera position and a good ratio of sitting scenes.

Similar attention to atmospherics and angles should work in politics, if the last eight years are any measure. If we make the undersized candidate’s speeches lively enough, weed all the ex-basketball stars out of his Secret Service detail, cut off his wife’s high heels and shorten the lectern, he will appear as stately as his rhetoric.

Some strategists will suggest confronting the issue, throwing in a few self-deprecatory jokes or noting the heroic exploits of Spud Webb, 5-foot-7 guard for the Atlanta Hawks, but I consider this risky.

It is far better to stand straight, with your chin up, as my mother always told me to do. Look your adversary in the eye--though don’t stand so close the camera can get both of you in the same frame.

Finally, pray that good taste and fair play win the day. If they don’t, it will be a long time before we see any more like James Madison (5 feet 4) in the Oval Office, what with colossal 1992 presidential hopefuls, glandular cases like Sens. Bill Bradley (D, 6 feet 5) and Alan K. Simpson (R, 6 feet 7), hulking in the wings.

1952 and 1956: Eisenhower (5-10) beat Stevenson (5-10).

1960: Kennedy (6- 1/2) beat Nixon (5-11).

1964: Johnson (6-3) beat Goldwater (6-0).

1968: Nixon (5-11) beat Humphrey (5-11).

1972: Nixon (5-11) beat McGovern (6-1).

1976: Carter (5-9 1/2) beat Ford (6-0).

1980: Reagan (6-1) beat Carter (5-9 1/2).

1984: Reagan (6-1) beat Mondale (5-11).

1988: Bush (6-2) and Dukakis (5-8) are running for President.