The Redford Factor: Do Looks Really Sway Voters?

From the moment Dan Quayle was picked by George Bush last month, comparisons between the young, blond Indiana senator and actor Robert Redford made the presidential campaign suddenly sound like a casting call.

In his quest for the vice presidency, some Republican pros stated, Quayle would certainly be a big hit with women, a bridge over the so-called gender gap.

“He runs well in Indiana among women,” a male Indiana delegate said.

But is it true? Do looks make a candidate?

“All other things being equal, good looks will get votes,” said sociologist Barry Glassner, author of “Bodies,” a new book about the attractiveness quotient in people’s lives.

Happiness, Success, Stability

Good looks telegraph that a candidate is happier, more successful, more trustworthy and more psychologically stable than an opponent who has 5 o’clock shadow or a nose that should be on maps, said Glassner, who teaches at the University of Connecticut.

“A lot of research has been done by giving people pictures and asking them, ‘Who would you trust more as a leader?’ The more attractive person comes out ahead consistently,” he said.

Although Richard Nixon won four national elections--counting being elected vice president twice--he was saddled with a reputation for disrepute even before Watergate, Glassner said. “Just being less attractive made him less appealing, less believable.”

In his first, losing race for the Oval Office in 1960, Nixon had the added burden of running against John F. Kennedy, the politician who continues to set the standard for political looks 25 years after his assassination.

Kennedy “was the last President who was worshiped by the people, who was both great and interesting. He’s the last reference point,” Glassner said. “We’re presented every day with millions of images of authoritative-looking men in advertising and on television. The prototype for that image for several decades has been Kennedy.”

A Role in Quayle Selection

The mythic appeal of the dead President is so strong that it probably played a role in Quayle’s selection for the 1988 Republican ticket, Glassner said. “The subliminal appeal of someone like Quayle is his resemblance to Kennedy.”

In fact, American voters’ penchant for pleasing faces and figures has driven many a politician to the beauty parlor and the gym.

Confronted with their own tired hair styles and pounds of vote-losing fat, Maryland politicians decided en masse in 1985 to beautify themselves before ballot time. One overweight legislator, trying to drop 100 pounds, decried what he called “a prejudice for pretty people,” according to a news account. In the 1920s, Warren G. Harding, whose other qualifications for the office were mysterious, got good marks from the public because “he looked like a President,” says Robert Dallek, a UCLA historian specializing in the presidency.

In the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson’s vanity dictated that he be photographed only from his “good” left side. This year Democratic vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen also has been cited for the “presidential” quality of his face, especially in comparison with Quayle’s youthful appearance.

Other Things Not Equal

Naturally, there’s a catch to all this. All other factors are seldom equal in elections, Glassner and others note.

For one thing, Kennedy’s role as archetype is not reflected in the voting record.

He lost the women’s vote--51% of them voted for Nixon. A 1960 poll on what American voters wanted in a President found that Kennedy’s youthful image sometimes worked against him with women.

“He is the type of man every woman would like to mother, with that little-boy look,” one woman told pollsters in a survey for Life magazine. “I don’t think you can take a man like this and put him in the White House and expect him to command the respect of the nation.”

Carter Beat Ford

Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford--who pardoned Nixon--in 1976, despite the fact that people generally think Ford more attractive than Carter, Glassner said.

(Interestingly, studies of the attractiveness quotient typically are conducted as blind tests with the participants not knowing who the men in question really are. “You can find plenty of people who don’t know these people, if you mix their pictures up with a lot of others and don’t identify them,” Glassner said.)

In this year’s presidential election, the received wisdom--and conundrum--about looks does indeed seem to apply most directly to Quayle.

As for presidential candidates Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis, looks-related attention has centered on their heights--6-feet-2 and 5-feet-8, respectively. No one seems to think they’re in a face race.

Where Are the Handsome Ones?

On the whole, the country seems to be going through a drought when it comes to handsome politicians. Many of those interviewed for this story drew blanks when asked to list the current crop of best-looking politicians.

USC political scientist Sheldon Kamieniecki is skeptical that Quayle’s looks will have a big impact with women.

“I think it’s minor,” said Kamieniecki, a specialist in voting patterns. “It could actually have the opposite effect, particularly among those women who think he’s too young.” Despite occasional assumptions to the contrary, the last several elections show that “women are not an organized block,” he added.

But Kamieniecki conceded that the Quayle’s charm may not be a total washout.

May Not See an Insult

“Women with less education, who tend to be housewives, who didn’t go to college, who may not have finished high school, are less likely to see that as an insult, particularly if they’re single and young.”

Not surprisingly, many women’s organizations have been doing a slow burn over the looks issue. They’re not necessarily mad at Quayle. But they’re furious anyone would think their votes can be wooed by superficial means.

“I think there’s a real resentment among women that (a candidate’s) looks would get him into office,” said Patricia Reuss, legislative director of the Women’s Equity Action League in Washington. “Otherwise, Robert Redford would be in office, and he’s not.”

If elections were determined by appearance, Reuss added, “about 80% of Congress would not be there.”

Women’s Anger Obscured

In fact, the furor over Quayle’s National Guard service during the Vietnam War obscured the fuming by women’s groups over what they see as a Republican slight to the intelligence of women voters.

In the days after Quayle was named to the ticket, nonpartisan groups ranging from the American Assn. of University Women to the National Women’s Political Caucus said their members expressed anger over the reported reasons behind Quayle’s selection.

At the university women’s association, members’ reactions prompted quick production of a press release decrying “the notion that women are too dumb to vote the issues,” spokeswoman Carolin Head said, explaining that “it’s not really an anti-Quayle release.” She added, “Before we wrote it (the release), members were calling us and saying, ‘My God, you’ve got to do something about this.’ ”

Republican women also are concerned that touting Quayle as a thief of female political hearts was a blunder.

Women Won’t Go for Looks

“If, in fact, that was one of the reasons they picked him, it is fairly insulting to women,” said Eileen Padberg, who headed Bush’s primary campaign in Nevada and California and is now working for the Republican National Committee. “I do not believe women are going to vote for this ticket based on looks.”

However, Padberg expressed doubt that Quayle’s looks were ever a factor with Bush’s inner circle. That idea, she said, came from “peripheral” Republican males. She did concede that Republicans traditionally “have not gone directly to women to engage women in conversation.”

Former Reagan White House aide Linda Chavez, defeated by another woman for a U.S. Senate seat in 1986, agreed that “the looks issue” was not a factor in the choice of Quayle. Rather, she said, Quayle got the nod partly because of his potential to close the gap between Bush’s generation and baby boomers.

However, Chavez conceded, Quayle does have one valuable quality in which appearance is important--he is “telegenic. It’s not just his bone structure, it’s the way he moves and projects personality,” she said.

‘Reverse Sexism’

Chavez also charged that using Quayle’s looks as a qualification for a national election is “reverse sexism.”

“They would never, ever say that about an attractive female,” she said.

While Chavez sought to erase Quayle’s bone structure as an electoral sore point, the Democrat who defeated her, Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, was performing some surgery of her own. In a quote released by her office, Mikulski said that Quayle would make a great “prom date” but that he “doesn’t understand the bread and butter issues” of interest to women.

“His good looks won’t pay the mortgage, buy groceries or get day care for your kids,” Mikulski said.

Women’s Vote Must Be Earned

Irene Natividad, chairwoman of the National Women’s Political Caucus, said no party can take the women’s vote for granted. In 1984 the Democrats “had a woman on the ticket and they felt that was enough,” she said.

”. . .The Democrats have to lock that vote in. It is leaning their way but they have to work for it.”

Elsewhere, reactions to the handsomeness quotient were more jaded. At the National Organization for Women, president Molly Yard said, “Everybody laughed, the idea was so ridiculous.”

So, how does the man himself feel about his looks as a political asset?

Quayle apparently wishes he could dodge the topic.

A former press secretary says comparisons with Robert Redford have hurt Quayle in the past, according to an Associated Press report.

“He wanted to be taken seriously. He wanted to be taken as a professional trying to do a job,” the former aide said.