6-Footer Clinton May Find Nominees Easy to Overlook

With President-elect Clinton topping out well over six feet, it is too early to say that short people are taking over the new Administration, but Friday’s appointments did show a certain trend.

“I’m actually delighted to be joining the newest caucus in the executive office of the President, the Rivlin-Reich-Stephanopoulos-Shalala Short Caucus,” Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Donna Shalala said Friday.

Shalala added that her longtime friend, Alice Rivlin, Clinton’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, had warned her to “make they sure they get a step” after her appearance at Thursday’s press conference in which the podium microphones seemed to be in danger of poking her eyes out.

Clinton communications director George Stephanopoulos was the butt of good-natured ribbing about his height during the fall campaign, but at roughly 5-foot-5, he is taller than the other members of Shalala’s new caucus. In particular, Clinton’s designee for Labor Secretary, Robert B. Reich, is barely 4-foot-8. That’s up some, Reich says. Earlier this year, he had an operation to have his hips replaced, Reich told an interviewer recently, and told the doctor to put the new ones in a little taller.